LIBRARY OF CX)NGRESS 



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COLLECTION 



FROM 



THE NEWSPAPER WRITINGS 



OF 



NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 



CONCORD: 
PUBLISHED BY JOHN R. FRENCH; 

1847. 






" The world is out of tune now.— But it will be tuned again, and all discord 
become harmony. — When Slavery and War are abolished, and hanging and im- 
prisoning, and all hatred and distrust — when the strife of humanity shall be, who 
will love most and help the readiest ; when the tyrant steeple shall no longer 
tower, in sky-aspiring contempt of humanity's cowering dwellings about its base ; 
when pulpits and priests, and hangmen and generals, gibbets and jails shall have 
vanished from the delivered earth, then shall be heard music here, where they 
used to stand. The hills shall then break forth into singing, and all the trees of 
the field shall clap their hands." 



CONCORD, N. H. 
STEREOTTPED AND PRINTED BY MORRILL, SILSBT AND CO. 



PUBLISHER'S NOTICE. 



In collecting, from the abundance of Mr. Rogers' news- 
paper writings, articles sufficient to fill the proposed " vol- 
ume of four hundred pages," the constant difficulty has 
been to decide " What shall be omitted ?" All the pro- 
ductions of his peerless pen, scattered with such generous 
profusion through various newspaper columns — all are 
worthy of more permanent and extensive circulation. 
Where all are so beautifully in earnest and so full of im- 
portant thoughts, a selection is not to be made, and so a 
coZlection, only, has been attempted. The articles com- 
posing this volume have no peculiar excellency of style 
or sentiment over scores of others standing by their side 
in the columns from whence they were taken. The aim 
has been to take such as, from the subjects treated of, 
might interest the greater number of the friends of the 
lamented author, and such too as seemed fitted peculiarly 
for still further work in advancing the great interests to 
which their author gave the last years of his life with 
such complete devotion. No attempt has been made to 
establish a consistent character for our friend, for " co7i- 
sistency^^ was no part of his aim while living; constant,' 
uninterrupted progress — going forward — the reader will 
notice ; never anxious for the sentiment spoken yesterday, 
but always careful to give utterance to the honest convic- 
tions of the hour. Such was he in life — let such be his 
reputation now that he rests from his labors. 

It may be due to the memory of our friend to say here, 
for the information of such as may read this volume, and 
who were not of his intimate acquaintance, that some 
of his associates in the Anti-Slavery cause, who are fre- 



iv PUBLISHER'S NOTICE. 

quently spoken of in these pages in warm commendation, 
he was afterward, from further acquaintance and trial, 
forced to regard as men and women of very different cha- 
racter. WiUiam Lloyd Garrison, especially — a name that 
will be met with often in this volume coupled with utter- 
ance of the most affectionate and enthusiastic esteem — 
Mr. Rogers, during the last two years of his life, was 
under the mortifying and painful necessity of holding in 
very decidedly different estimation. Our friend carried a 
Avarm and trustful heart ; never looking for selfishness 
and ambition in others, knowing none himself, he often 
had to drink of the bitter cup of unappreciated disinterest- 
edness, and partake of the mortification of unworthily 
bestowed commendation. 

Many articles that friends have desired should appear 
in this collection, from fear of swelling the volume to an 
undue size and expense, we have been obliged reluc- 
tantly to omit. It is possible that another collection of 
Mr. Rogers' newspaper writings may be made and pub- 
lished at a future day. j. R. p. 

Plymouth, 24 June, 1 847. 



CONTENTS 



Introduction ix 

" The Presence of God" 1 

The Discussion 5 

Call to a Convention , 9 

Patience of Abolitionists 11 

Dr. Farmer dead 13 

Constitutionality of Slavery, — Keene Sentinel 15 

Colonization Love and " Logic," — Rev. R. R. Gurley 21 

Eclipse of the Sun 25 

Balloon Ascension 27 

George Thompson 29 

Limitations of Human Responsibilities, — Dr. Wayland 31 

Jaunt to Vermont 34 

Dr. Francis Wayland 39 

Color-phobi% 44 

The New Hampshire Courier 47 

Colonization 43 

The New Hampshire Patriot 51 

Reverend Ralph Randolph Gurley, — Elliot Cresson 54 

Ichabod Bartlett, — Osceola 56 

Massachusetts, — The Liberator 59 

Anti-Slavery Divisions 62 

War with Great Britain 65 

Unparalleled Outrage 66 

Extract of Letter from Durham 70 

Emancipation in the West Indies 73 

The African Strangers 75 

Cingues , 78 

Pierpont ejected from the Pulpit 80 

The North Star 82 

The Monthly Miscellany, — " Slavery as it is" 84 

The Fifteen- Gallon Law 87 

Anti-Slavery 89 

The World's Convention 91 

A* 



vi CONTENTS. 

Letter from Edinburgh 93 

To the Abolitionists of New Hampshire, on return from Europe 96 

Ride over " The Border" 102 

Daniel Webster 105 

Wincobank Hall, — James Montgomery 106 

Wentworth House and Park 109 

Ride into Edinburgh, — Melrose Abbey, — Abbotsford ] 13 

Letter to Editorial Chair 118 

Pro-Slavery " Excommunication" 121 

Correspondence v/ith Pierpont 122 

" Ailsa Craig" 128 

Extract of a Letter, — Philadelphia 135 

Meetings at New York,— Harriet Lloyd 138 

" Tales of Oppression," — Isaac T. Hopper, — James S. Gibbons 140 

Mary Clark 143 

Proceedings of the Annual Meeting 144 

Trees 146 

Salem, — Newbury port, — Whitefield 153 

Anti-Slavery Jaunt to the Mountains, — Meeting at Plymouth, — 
North Hill, — Baker's River, — Franconia Notch, — The Flume, — 
The " Old Man of the Mountain," — Convention at Littleton, — 
Fabyan's Tin Horn, — Ride up Mount Washington, — " The 

Willey House" 157 

Poetry 194 

Sectarian Worship 196 

Rhode Island Meeting, — Public Buildings in Providence, — Frederfck 

Douglass 197 

Lecture on Elocution 206 

Clerical "Jugglery" 208 

Poetry 210 

British Abolitionism 213 

Anti-Slavery 219 

Church and State 221 

Cobbett's American Gardener 227 

At Home again. — Lynn, — Swamscott, — Marblehead 230 

Bell-Ringing 232 

Great Meeting-House Eruption 234 

Newburyport Jail, — Thomas Parnell Beach 241 

The Hutchinson Singers 244 

Speech 247 

The Boston Miscellany 248 

Richard D. Webb ..250 

Labor 255 

Spring 259 



CONTENTS. yij 

The stultifying Power of Superstition, — Daniel O'Connell 261 

Politics 263 

*' Shakespeare Gallery" 266 

O'Connell 270 

The Hutchinsons 272 

" The Tigers" 274 

" Muster" 275 

A uthority 280 

Property 285 

Macbeth 288 

Letter from Plymouth, — Woburn Butchers, — The Hutchinsons 290 

The Anti-Slavery Platform 292 

Letter from Plymouth 294 

Funeral at Sea 296 

The Jews and Holy Land 301 

" Pen and Ink Sketches,"— Byron 304 

The Anti-Slavery Movement 307 

Letter from Plymouth 309 

The Great Question of the Age 311 

" You are before the Age" 314 

Aristocracy 317 

The Learned Blacksmith 320 

It rains 322 

The Legislature 324 

" High Rock" 327 

Letter from Plymouth, — The Franconia Mountains 329 

" The Unconstitutionality of Slavery," — George Bradburn, — Lysan- 

der Spooner's Essay 332 

The American Board 337 

" The Rights of Animals" 339 

" Infidelity" 340 

Thanksgiving 341 

Reply to " H. O. S." 343 

The " Attic Weaver" 350 

Henry Brown, — Crayon Portraits 352 

Thoughts on the Death Penalty, by C. C. Burleigh 355 

Instrumentalities 357 

Letter from Lynn 359 

War 363 

The Death of Torrey 366 

" Pastoral Convention" 370 

Tilling the Ground 373 

Bursting of the Paixhan Gun 375 

Free Speech 377 



INTRODUCTION. 



In presenting to the public a volume of the miscellaneous writings 
of Nathaniel P. Rogers, his family and friends feel that they are 
meeting a demand, often and earnestly pressed upon them, and, at the 
same time, contributing something to the cause for which he made great 
sacrifices, and devoted his highest powers and the best years of his life. 

To all those who are interested in the writer's reputation, it is a matter 
of deep regret that his own life was not spared either to make the selec- 
tion himself, or at least to let a selection, made by another, pass under 
his eye, and have the benefit of his own judgment, as to the pieces 
upon which he would be most willing to rest his claim upon the grateful 
regards of those who should commune with his spirit when his body 
should be 

'•' Commingling slowly with its mother earth." 

Yet, even had he lived, it is doubtful whether he would ever have 
been induced to do for himself, what his friends have here attempted to 
do for him. He was more mindful of the good of others, than of his 
own fame. And it was more in accordance witli his nature to produce 
and cast abroad the gems of thought, feeling and imagination, than to 
gather them up and arrange them in a cabinet for his own gratification, 
or the admiration even of his friends. But the treasures tliat he scat- 
tered with a liberal, and, for his health and life, quite too prodigal a 
hand, will be like choice seed, which, sown in a strong soil, not culti- 
vated enough to be quite ready for it, will yet strike its roots and live, 
and the field into which it is cast will yet feel its virtue, and be subdued 
and fertilized by it. Rogers wrote, as he did every thing else, for 
humanity, not for fame. He consulted the good of the future, not the 
fashion of the present ; and his claims to the regard, even of the future, ho 
chose to rest rather upon help given to those who " could not help tlicm- 
selves," than upon the good opinion of critics or literary connoisseurs. 

Whoever reads this book, will see that it was written by an earnest, 
and therefore an honest man ; a man whose soul was alive to the work 
to which he put his hand ; and who expected not, and asked not, the 
applause of a sensual and servile age. He sought rather to gratify 
the cravings of his own fei-vent spirit, tliat glowed with love and pity 



INTRODUCTION. 



for those who were " despised and rejected of men ;" and he did this, 
knoiving that if "the world and they that are therein," have a Creator, 
who careth for his work, he cannot be indifferent to the welfare of the 
oppressed and enslaved, and that he must approve — as ultimately lie 
will prosper — tlie labors of such as " preach deliverance to the captive^ 
and set at liberty tlieni that are bruised." 

Our friend might have worn, but he did not " wear soft raiment, or 
dwell in kings' houses." Lazarus-like, here " he received evil things." 
He might have received " good things," or what in the world pass for 
such, had he pleased. With his hands full of talents, that he might 
have readily caused to be coined into golden eagles, for the sake of 
tlie slave " he became poor." He might have died under a silken can- 
opy, and been followed to the grave far otlierwise than he was. But, 
with his eyes wide open, he chose tlie course of a confessor and martyr ; 
and, as a natural consequence, he drank a confessors — a martyr's cup. 
He drank of that cup, especially, for several of the last years of liis life. 
He drank it to tlie very dregs, during its closing hours ; — drank it like 
a martyr — like a man. 

And why should he not ? A martyr's blood ran in his veins. He was 
a lineal descendant from that " John Rogers who was burnt at Smith- 
field, during the reign of Queen Mary ;" nor had the blood that was 
shed, nor the spirit that was tlien tried in the baptism of fire, degenerated 
by its transmission from the old martyr's stake at Smitlifield, to the 
modern Molitio7iist''s deatli-bed at Concord.* 

T loved too well, and have lamented too deeply, this noble-spirited 
man, this sensitive child of genius, this self-sacrificing philanthropist, to 

* While Mr. Rogers was in London, in attendance upon the " World's Anti- 
Slavery Convention," in 1840, he was careful to go upon the ground at Smithfield, 
— now a cattle market — that was sanctified, in his sight, and that of all men who 
know where true greatness lies, by tlie martyrdom of his illustrious ancestor. 

It may be interesting to some of Mr. Rogers' friends to trace the descent of the 
Smithfield blood and spirit through the successive generations ; to gratify this 
desire, we have attempted to hunt up the genealogy of the family, which is here 
given as fully and correctly as we have been able to ascertain it. 

1. John Rogers, the Martyr. 

2. Kine or ten children ; which number appears uncertain 

3. Rev. John Rogers, of Dedham, England, a son of one of them, died 18 Oc- 
tober, 1G39, aged C7. His son, 

4. Rev. Nathaniel Rogers, was born 1598, came to New England in 1636, and 
settled in Ipswich, Mass., where he died 3 July, 1655, aged 57. His wife was 
Margaret, daughter of Robert Crane, of Coggeshall, England ; and she died 23 
January, 167C. His children were, 

5. John, President of Harvard College in 1682, died 2 July, 1684, aged &4 5 a 



INTRODUCTION. xi 



allow me to refuse the office, which, I learn from his afflicted widow, 
his cherished friendship assigned to me before his death. Speaking of 
llie contemplated volume of Extracts from his writings, she says, in a 
note to me, " He began to prepare it, at the request of a number of his 
friends, some months before his death; and he often expressed his 

daughter ; Nathaniel, who died in 1680, without issue ; Samuel, who married 
Sarah Wade, 13 November, ICGl, and died 21 December, 1693 j Timothy j and 
Ezekiel, who had several children, (Nathaniel, Ezekiel, Timothy and Samuel) 
and died in 1674. 

The John Rogers who was President of Harvard College, had a son John, who 
was pastor of the first church in Ipswich, and died 28 Dec. 1745, in his 80th year. 
The latter had a son Daniel, who was pastor of a church in Exeter, N. H., and 
died 9 December, 1783, aged 78, and a son Nathaniel, who was pastor of the first 
church in Portsmouth, N. H. 

6. Jeremiah Rogers, of Salem, Mass., who died 1729-30, was the ancestor of 
N. P. Rogers, and was probably a son of the Samuel or Timothy mentioned in 
5, or else a grandson of Samuel, Timothy or Ezekiel ; but at this time, and with 
the imperfect state of the records, it is supposed impossible to make this certain. 
His wife was Dorcas. That Jeremiah Rogers was a grandson of Rev. Nathaniel, 
of Ipswich, is attested on tradition. His granddaughter, Susanna, was the wife 
of Dr. Jacob Peabody, and mother of the late General Nathaniel Peabody, of 
Exeter, N. H. Jeremiah's son, 

7. Rev. John Rogers was born at Salem, 22 November, 1684, graduated at 
Harvard College in 1705, and was ordained tlie minister of Boxford. He died at 
Leominster, 17 August, 1755, in his 71st year. His wife was Susanna, daughter 
of Capt. Manasaeh Marston, of Salem. She was born 29 April, 1687, and died 
at Salem, 22 October, 1757, aged 70. They were married 24 March, 1709. The 
children were Susanna, John, Benjamin, Mehitabel, Nathaniel, Lydia and Eunice. 
Their son, 

8. Rev. John Rogers, was born at Boxford, Mass., 24 September, 1712; was 
ordained the first minister of Leominster, 14 September, 1744; was dismissed, 
January, 1758, and died in October, 1789, aged 77. His son, 

9. Dr. John Rogers, was born at Leominster, Mass., 27 March, 1735 ; graduated 
at Harvard College in 1776 ; settled in Plymouth, N. H., as a physician, and was 
eminent in his profession, and well known for his poetical talents. His wife was 
Betsy Mulliken, of Bradford, Mass. He died 8 March, 1814, aged 59. Their 
fifth child was 

Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, who, it will be seen, was one of the tenth 
generation from him who is so well known as the " first in that blessed company 
of martyrs who suffered in the reign of the bigoted Mary." The blood of the 
Martyr flowed pure and in liberal measure in the son even thus distantly removed. 
Not only did " heart answer to heart," but wonderfully did " face answer to face." 
Those who have seen both our deceased friend and a well-preserved portrait of 
the Martyr, hanging in one of the halls of the American Antiquarian Society at 
Worcester, cannot have failed to notice the great resemblance in the shape of 
the face and head, in the eye, the complexion, and the general expression of the 
two men 



INTRODUCTION. 



intention to request you to furnish an Introduction ; — and I cannot but 
believe it would be gratifying to you to do it, especially as it was a 
favorite idea of the dear departed, whose attachment to yourself was 
both fervent and sincere." 

Yet I know myself too well not to know that I shall best discharge 
the duty assigned me by letting others, who were more constantly in his 
society, and more closely allied to him than myself, speak in my stead. 
Being more frequently in his presence, laboring under his eye in the 
same cause, and partaking largely of his spirit — seeing how manfully 
he bore his cross while he lived and suffered, and how calmly, after all 
liis labors and sufferings, he could die, — the language in which they 
speak of our common friend, is much more touching, because much 
more true to nature, than any that, without their aid, I could command. 
Much of what follows, therefore, is compiled from an obituary notice 
of Mr. Rogers, from tlie pen of John R. French, which appeared in 
" The Herald of Freedom" of Oct 23, 1846, and from an article by 
Richard Hildreth, inserted in the same paper, from the Boston Chrono- 
type, and a few other brief notices, transferred from other journals into 
the same number of the Herald. 

Mr. Rogers was a son of Dr. John Rogers, of Plymouth, N. H., where 
lie was born, June 3, 1794 ; consequently, he was fifty-two years of age 
at the time of his death. His fatlier was a highly respectable physician, 
a man of brilliant intellect and superior education, — a graduate of Har- 
vard College of the class of 1777, and a son of the Rev. John Rogers 
of Leominster, Mass., — a clergyman in his day somewhat celebrated for 
his talents and independence in religious faith, and for his rebellion 
against ecclesiastical domination. 

Mr. Rogers' mother, an intelligent and quite active old lady, still lives, 
at tlie advanced age of eighty-six, to mourn the son of her strong affec- 
tion. The only desire longer to live, expressed by our friend during his 
sickness was, that he might minister to the wants and comfort of his 
mother, in the decline of her life ; and the only request that he left to 
his family was, that they would do all in their power to make her happy. 

The subject of this notice entered Dartmouth College in 1811, but, 
after remaining one year, was, through ill health, obliged to leave. He 
afterwards returned, and, in 1816, took his degree with the class next 
below that with which he entered. He immediately afterwards entered 
upon the study of the law ; spending two years with Richard Fletcher, 
then of Salisbury, N. H., now of Boston ; and one year with Parker 
Noyes, also of Salisbury. He then commenced the practice of his 
profession in his native village, where he remained for twenty years, a 
diligent and successful lawyer. With an instinctive delicacy, — which, 



INTRODUCTION. xiii 



wliile it was one of tlie ornaments of his character, kept all but his 
intimate friends in ignorance of his ability, — he shrunk from the rude 
encounter of tlie forum, and was seldom known as a pleader. But, so 
accurate was his knowledge of the law, and so industrious and shrewd 
was he in his business, that a client's success was always calculated 
upon from tlie moment that his assistance was secured. 

The mind of our deceased friend was severely and beautifully disci- 
plined. Enriched by a greedy and enthusiastic reading of the book of 
Nature, and made to love its pages, not only by his delicate and poetic 
organization, but by the beauty and sublimity of some of the finest 
scenery on the earth's surface, in the midst of which he had his birth, 
it had been cultivated by familiarity with the great writers of both an- 
cient and modern times. But for the last ten years of his life, Mr. 
Rogers had almost entirely given up the reading of books, and turned 
his whole attention to the condition of men, in their various circum- 
stances of suffering and oppression. 

His susceptible heart was among the first to be touched, especially, 
by tlie wrongs of the slave. He entered into the Anti-Slavery con- 
troversy with great zeal, and presently removed to Concord, for the 
purpose of more conveniently publishing the " Herald of Freedom," 
which he edited for some years, with very slight, if any compensation, 
devoting the Avhole of his available time to the cause. This paper 
purported, during a portion of this period, to be under tlie patronage 
of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society. But it owed all its inte- 
rest, and, in fact, its very existence, to the brilliant contributions and 
disinterested labors of Mr. Rogers. 

To the readers of the " Herald of Freedom" nothing need be said of 
his ability. As a newspaper writer, we think him unequalled by any 
living man ; and in the general strengtli, clearness and quickness of his 
intellect, we think that all Avho knew him well, will agree with us, that 
he was not excelled by any editor in this country. His facility in writ- 
ing was perfectly wonderful. His articles were always written with a 
rapidity which few can ever attain. Never under the necessity of wait- 
ing for the coming up of a thought, or for the arranging of a sentence, 
his pen seemed to be driven forward by the impetuous current of his 
thoughts, tlie fountains of which seemed never to be exhausted. When 
^vriting for his paper, the limits of his columns were the only limits to 
his articles ; and during the time of his editing, probably as much that 
he wrote was omitted for want of room, as was printed. 

Mr. Rogers, following the lead of Mr. Garrison, became a Non- 
resistant. He also, along with Mr. Garrison, loudly appealed to the 
Church, for aid. Of this, he had become an ardent and devoted meun- 
B 



Xiv INTRODUCTION. 



ber ; and, educated in tlie idea that to the Church we must look for the 
salvation of humanity, to whom, or to what, but the Church — it was 
natural for him to ask — shall we look for the redemption of tlie enslaved 
millions of our land ? But the response that he met from that quarter — 
so unexpected and so mortifying — led him, as it has led many others, to 
review his opinions, and to inquire by what title, and by what autliority, 
the Church claims to decide all questions of right and wrong. He 
came to the conclusion that "the Church" is a mere self-constituted 
association of individuals, whose claim to particular election, special 
inspiration, or peculiar divine guidance, is without any solid foundation. 

Mr. Rogers had been educated in the most profound reverence for the 
Bible. But having once entered on tlie path of free inquiry, he did not 
shrink nor give back. He concluded, after much reflection, that all 
moral questions are to be decided by an appeal to reason and conscience, 
not by texts from ancient writings in Hebrew and Greek — texts, often 
quite as likely to perplex as to enlighten — however tradition may ascribe 
to those writings a mysterious or sacred character. At these conclusions 
our friend arrived, in company with many of his associates in the Anti- 
Slavery movement ; though not all of them, perhaps, were quite so free 
and candid as himself in the avowal of them. 

But upon another point, Mr. Rogers liad the fortune to differ from 
some of his former associates ; and a consequent coolness took place 
between tliem, which was never wholly removed. He refused to adopt 
the new war-cry lifted up by Mr. Garrison — " No union with slave- 
holders." He could bring his lips only to say, " No union with slave- 
holding." He looked upon Anti-Slavery as exclusively a moral agitation, 
and felt that its higli office was degraded by connecting it with party 
politics, or with a political party. He was a thorough, and meant to be 
a consistent. Non-resistant. As such, he wannly condemned the forma- 
tion of the " Liberty Party ;" and having denounced tlie " Third Party," 
he did not feel himself inclined to join a Fourth, and, witli it, or in it, to 
commence an agitation for tlie dissolution of tlie Union, even though 
that party was headed by Mr. Garrison. He went farther. Having, in 
company with his non-resistant friends, repudiated all political organi- 
zation, by following out tlie same principle, he became an advocate for 
" free meetings," and opposed putting the Anti-Slavery movement under 
the guardianship and control of Chairmen, Committees and Boards. 
Disquieted by this inconvenient consistency, and tliis thorough carrying 
out of his non-resistant principles, his non-resistant friends in Massa- 
chusetts, consulting and co-operating with some of those in New Hamp- 
shire, decided that the property of the " Herald of Freedom" was not 
in him, but in the Board of tlie New Hampshire Anti-Slaverj' Society. 



INTRODUCTION. xv 



It is not my purpose to enter into the question of tlie right or wrong 
of this decision. 

" Non nostrum tantas componere lites." 

I have neither the means, nor the power, nor the wish, to act as umpire 
in the case. I have friends whom I truly love and honor, on each side 
of the question, and I have observation and experience enough of human 
infirmity, and of the liability of tlie best men to err in their judgments, 
when deciding questions that deeply interest tlie feelings, to allow me 
to believe, as in this case I do believe, tliat both parties were honest in 
forming and in practically carrying out their judgments as to the right 
in this trying and keenly contested case. 

But Mr. Rogers felt that he was wronged : — more yet — tliat he had 
been wounded in the house of his friends ; — that tliey, with whom, for 
years, he had taken sweet counsel, had lifted up the heel against him. 
He had looked upon the " Herald of Freedom" as his own child. He 
had watched over it early and late. He had rocked its cradle alone 
during long night watches. He had dandled it upon his knee, when 
he was himself worn and weary in laboring to feed it And when 
he did lie down to rest, it lay in his bosom — the object nearest to his 
heart. He had given it its life and his own ; — had stamped upon it " the 
image of himself," — made it glow with the fire of his own genius, and 
taught it to go forth into the world and do battle for the eight, with 
his own brave spirit. He thought that it was his own child. But 
when his former friends decided that it was not ; that he was but the 
foster-father of the young mountain genius ; — though they told him that 
they wished him still to act as such, — still to feed and clothe it, and 
let it bear his name — he could not. The tie that had bound him to 
it was broken. It could never again be to him what it had been, and 
he withdrew himself from all further care of it, witli a desolation of 
heart that, under no event of his life, had he ever felt before. The same 
shaft that thus struck the heart of the brave Mountain Eagle, broke also 
his wing. Though his spirit was unconquered, and, to the last, had the 
same high aim, the poor flesh was unequal to do its bidding. He never 
soared, afterwards, as he had done ; and though, in conjunction with the 
former publisher of tlie " Herald of Freedom," he edited and published 
anotJier paper, devoted to the same cause to which he had already given 
and sacrificed so much, yet he could never make the second paper what 
tlie first had been, and even a stranger could see that its editor felt 
himself a wronged and broken-hearted man. 

It is unpleasant to me to say these things ; but, in the words of Mr. 
Hildreth, " they are essential to a true understanding of the character 



INTRODUCTION. 



of Mr. Rogers. Tender and gentle, he was yet firm as a rock, neitlier 
to be cajoled, brow-beaten, nor driven. Ardent, keen, spealdng out his 
whole mind, there was notliing about him of savage selfishness, or sec- 
tarian malice. Cant and liumbug, of which so large a share enters into 
most newspaper compositions, were to him totally unknown." 

While suffering from sickness and from abandonment by his former 
friends, Mr. Rogers had the additional misfortune to find his young and 
numerous family, tlirough the failure of a relative, to whose hands a 
large part of his property was entrusted, suddenly deprived of tlie pro- 
vision tliat his industry had made for tlieir education and support But 
amid all these sources of irritation, he remained gentle, collected, firm 
and hopeful as ever. He wrote for " The Herald of Freedom" even 
with increased diligence ; with occasional severity, indeed, yet his 
sharpest articles were but the brilliant corruscations of indignant genius, 
and the bitterest were but the true expressions of an honest and uncom- 
promising hatred of wrong. Whatever else there might be found in his 
colunms, you would encounter no dull dribblings of a heart hardened 
with selfishness, or festering with party spirit. 

Even among the weakness and sufterings of the summer immediately 
before his death, as a means, in part, of procuring bread for his children, 
he wrote tlie series of " Letters from tlie Old Man of tlie Mountain," 
published in tlie New York Tribune, which made him known to many 
who never saw " The Herald of Freedom." A part of tlie same sum- 
mer he spent in Lynn, near Boston, whither he went, early in July, to 
visit his few friends tliere, and to meet " the Hutchinsons," wlio were 
then daily expected from Europe. In a few days after his arrival at 
Lynn, tlie disarrangement of his physical system, from which lie had 
been a sufferer for thirty-five years, began to assume a more obstinate 
and fearful character. When about seventeen years of age, by too 
violent a participation in the exercise of " foot-ball," during his college 
life, he injured his side and stomach, which then occasioned a year's 
severe illness, resulting in chronic dyspepsia, which, togetlier witli the 
derangement of tlie otlier sympatlietic organs, entailed upon him long 
years of suffering, and now seemed to be about to finish tlie work that 
had been given it to do. He remained at Lynn, and with his friend 
Rev. Mr. Sargent, of Somerville, some six weeks, being unable diu-ing 
tliat time, to undertake the journey home. Yet such was his desire to 
be doing good, and to work wliile the day lasted, that notwitlistanding 
his weakness and pain, he every week furnished a large quota of die 
editorial matter for the " Lynn Pioneer," which labor, during Mr. Clapp's 
absence in Europe, he had taken upon liis weak but willing shoulders, 
besides attending and taking part in many Anti-Slavery, Temperance, 



INTRODUCTION. xvii 



and other reformatory meetings, that were held in Lynn and its vi- 
cinity. 

After returning home, Mr. Rogers left his house but a few times. His 
pains soon became of tlie most acute character, and continued, witliout 
intermission, until about two weeks of his death. So intense was his 
suffering, that before the close of August his family were in constant 
expectation of his death. How he was enabled to sustain the conflict, 
through the long and painful hours of the last six weeks of his life, was 
a wonder to all who were acquainted with his condition. More won- 
derful still was it, that his mind, through all the distress of his body, 
never, for an instant, faltered. 

From the commencement of his sickness, he was confident that death 
was to be the result, and spoke of his expectation of the event as calmly 
and bravely as he ever spoke of any incident of his life. A few days 
before his death, on observing one of his family in tears at his bed-side, 
he remarked tliat he was happy, and wished his family to be so, and to 
continue about their ordinary duties, just as if he were with them. To 
the hour of his death he retained an unabated interest in all that was 
doing in the world for the good of man. His constant inquiries were 
concerning the progress and state of the various philanthropic move- 
ments of the day, and for the health and doings of the friends with 
whom he had been associated in their common labors of benevolence. 
So strong was his desire still to be in the conflict for the Right, and 
for those who have no helper, that when his hand had become too weak 
to hold his pen, he would dictate articles for the press, and ask some 
friend, standing by his bed, to commit his thoughts to paper ; and it was 
only by the earnest remonstrances and entreaties of his friends, who 
found that these efforts increased the nervous excitement, from which 
he suffered greatly through all his sickness, tliat he was, at last, prevailed 
upon to quit the battle-field. 

The friends of Mr. Rogers had seen, for years before, that the excite- 
ment and labors of the Anti-Slavery reform were fast wearing him out ; 
and that his great mental activity was an overmatch for the delicacy and 
nervous sensitiveness of his physical system. But his deep love for the 
friendless slave, as well as his truly christian interest in the welfare of 
those who hold him in his chains, together with his devotion to the gen- 
eral cause of freedom and right, left little room in his heart — large as 
it was — for thought or care for himself The alienation of old friends, 
and the feeling that some who had once loved him, and who, he felt, 
ought to love him then better than they had ever done, were now finally 
and hopelessly estranged from him, cast a shade of sadness over the 
evening of his life, and, doubtless, hastened tlie going down of his guru 



IiNTRODUCTION. 



But from this, again, I turn, with sometliing of the sadness and sorrow 
which one cannot but feel on seeing good and loving hearts torn — and 
one or both of them broken in being torn — asunder. 

On Friday, Oct 16, with the falling of the leaves, Nathaniel Peabody 
Rogers breatlied his last. Witliout a struggle, witliout any of " the 
pains of death" — without a fear or a regret, — in tlie full, unimpaired 
enjoyment of his intellect and all his senses, — with his family and a few 
dear friends around him, his life went out, gently and quietly as fades 
the light of a summer's evening. At times, liis bodily distress had been 
excruciating, causing him to cry out ; yet his mind, never at rest, would 
draw food for thought even from his own physical sufferings. The Sun- 
day night before his death, — a friend watching with him — in a paroxysm 
of his suffering, he exclaimed, " O dear !" — then, seeming to reflect upon 
his own exclamation, he repeated it, and said, " That's the cry now 
This is the closing up of my terrible labors." The friend replied that it 
must be a consolation to him to consider tliat he had not sacrificed him- 
self in vain — that many had been blessed by his labors. JNIr. Rogers 
said, " O yes, my dear N ; it sustains me unspeakably, — tlie reflec- 
tion that I have acted right." 

During his sickness he had suffered greatly from the want of sleep, 
and the night before his death he had not slept at all. This day, con- 
sequently, he was more feeble than he had been any day before. He 
evidently suffered much, but made no complaint ; and, owing to his 
extreme weakness, he conversed but little with the friends that stood 
about his bed. His remaining strength seemed gradually to decrease, 
so gradually, indeed, tliat it was impossible to mark the moment when 
he ceased to breathe. But his mind, during tlie day, and up to the last 
moment, as, without any exception, it had been through all his sickness, 
was clear, calm and strong, as in the strongest hour of his life. 

A short time before his deatli, he desired that some one would go and 
ask Judson Hutchinson, who was in town, to come and sing to him. 
While waiting for his friend, he requested one of his daughters to sing 
him Samuel Lover's beautiful song, " The Angels' Whisper." In the 
singing, a word was accented wrong, which he immediately indicated 
by whispering the word Avith the correct accent ; tlius giving evidence, 
at once, of the calm and natural state of liis mind, and of his undying 
desire to have every thing, that was done, done right 

At the close of the song, he was asked whether Hutchinson, who 
had arrived during the singing, should come into tlie room. He spoke 
not, but made a slight motion of his hand, that was lying upon the pil- 
low, which attracted attention, and, from the peculiar manner in which 
his eyes were fixed upon a window, opposite to his bed, it was seen that 
the event that had, for weeks, been expected, was about to take place. 



INTRODUCTION. 



His oldest brotlier, who is a pliysician, and who had been with him 
several weeks during' his sickness, was called in from an adjoining room. 
He spoke to his brother, and asked if he knew him. The dying man 
turned liis eyes to the speaker, and, with emotion, calling him by name, 
replied, " Certainly," and then asked his wife, who was standing by, 
whether he understood his brother right, and why he had asked that 
question. In about ten minutes, with no otlier word, or a groan, or the 
moving of a muscle, " he was not, for God had taken him."* 

" On Sunday afternoon," says Mr. French, " a few neighbors and 
friends met at his late house, and, after an hour spent in social conver- 
sation, in which we relieved each other's sorrow by a remembrance of 
the virtuous life and calm death of our departed friend, we took his life- 
less body and buried it in a retired corner of the village grave-yard, 
beneath the sheltering shade of a kindly clump of oaks. In the same 
yard are buried Kimball and Cady, the two noble men who were the 
Editors of the Herald, previous to Mr. Rogers' connexion with it. The 
paper has been published but eleven years, yet the three men who have 
conducted its columns, have passed from life, — two of them while in its 
service. An admonition to us, who are left, to be diligent in the work 
that is given us to do. 

"From the establishment of the Herald, in 1835, Mr. Rogers had 
constantly furnished communications for its columns. He assumed the 
editorial care of the paper, the last week of June, 1838, and furnished 
his last copy the last week of June, the present year, [1846.] The 
amount of labor and thought that he has given through the columns of 
the Herald, its readers, for the eight years, well know. In addition to 
his tireless labors upon the Herald, he had, one year, edited the ' Na- 
tional Anti-Slavery Standard,' and, the past summer, had furnished the 
editorial for the ' Lynn Pioneer ;' and for the eight years, had been in 
the habit of furnisliing articles for various other papers ; and was al- 
ways ready, when his friends called, to attend Anti-Slavery meetings 
in all parts of New England ; never consulting his own interests, but 
always the desires of his friends and the necessities of the cause." 

Mr. French, to whom I am indebted for most of the facts, and for 
much of the language of these pages, says, in the same number of " The 
Herald of Freedom" that contains his obituary notice of the subject 
of this sketch, " Weary of contact with a world that gave him so little 
sympathy, Mr. Rogers, the last spring, purchased himself a small, but 
very beautiful farm, in a retired nook of his own native Pemigewasset 
valley ; whither he was intending to remove, with his family, at about 

* Heb. xi. 5. 



XX INTRODUCTION. 



the time of his decease. The world gave him not only little sympathy, 
but also little bread for his children. Upon his land he would be able — 
that was his hope — to procure the means of living ; and, thus relieved 
from tlie cankering care and perplexity that were preying upon his life, 
and removed from the chilling intercourse of the world, which so little 
understood him, lie hoped that he might be able to tliink deeper and 
clearer, and to wield his pen with a stronger heart. During tlie past 
summer, his thoughts were constantly upon his mountain retreat, where, 
in the quiet enjoyment of his most deeply cherished family, and amid 
the familiar scenes of his younger days, and in tlie healthful pursuits 
of agriculture, he was promising himself happy rest from tlie storm that 
had been tossing his shattered vessel for the last six years. But, alas ! 
how uncertain are all man's hopes 1" 

True, he found not that " happy rest," — but I doubt not, nor can I 
doubt, that he has found a happier one tlian that, — happier than even 
his aflectionate heart, that clung so lovingly to his happy home, ever 
painted : — I mean, " the rest that remaineth to the people of God." * 

But do I not forget that he was an " Infidel ?" nay, that he was 
" an Excommunicated person ?" — O, no. If to be an unbeliever in a 
religion — by whatever name you may baptize it — that expends itself 
upon catechisms and creeds, in church organizations and obser\'ances, 
in prayer-meetings, revivals, awakenings, and the singing of psalms, — 
to the neglect of Human Rights and Wrongs — of the sorrows and 
sufferings — the temptations, trials and oppressions of inan, is to be an 
Infidel, N. P. Rogers was an Infidel indeed ; yea, and he gloried in 
his infidelity. But let me add, had he been a believer in such a 
religion, and lived according to his belief, he would have been " worse 
than an infidel." But, was he not an outcast from the church — an ex- 
communicate ? Yes, the church excommunicated him ; but, before that, 
he had excommunicated tlie church. The church, as a body, he had 
found unfaithful to what he understood to be its " high calling," as the 
church of Him who came " to set at liberty them that are bruised." He 
therefore " came out" from it, as the only condition of fidelity to his own 
high calling, not merely as a disciple of Jesus, but as a man — a child 
of that God, whom all nature — his own nature, not less than the rest of 
creation— revealed to him as the lover of right and humanity, and the 
Almighty hater of all oppression and wrong. He wanted no printed 
book to teach him this. A revelation older than King James' Transla- 
tors'—older than the books that they brought over from Greek and He- 
brew into the English tongue, had taught him — for he was a lover of 



* Heb. iv. 9. 



INTRODUCTION. 



music — that slavery was a discord, that could never be brought into uni- 
son with the harmonies of the universe. To him, — if one should argue 
tliat slavery was from God, because it was approved in a hook that came 
from Him ; it would prove, not that slavery ivas from God, but that the 
book was not. To him, there was a Teacher above all books and all 
men : — the Being tliat had given him being — and it was in the spirit 
which that Teacher — and " who teacheth like him ?" — had given, that 
when, on a certain occasion, a religionist by Book said to him, " Why 
do you go about as you do, agitating the community on tlie subject of 
abolition ? Jesus Christ never preached abolitionism :" he replied, " Sir, 
I have two answers to your appeal to Jesus Christ. First, I deny your 
proposition, that he never preached abolition. That single precept of 
his — ' Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so 
to them' — reduced to practice, would abolish slavery over the whole 
earth in twenty-four hours. That is my first answer. I deny your 
proposition. Secondly, granting your proposition to be true — and ad- 
mitting — what I deny — that Jesus Christ did not preach the abolition 
of slavery, then I say, ht didnH do his duty^'' 

It would not be very easy, I admit, to stop such a man from doing his 
duty, by casting a Greek or a Hebrew text in his Avay as a stumbling 
block! And so he was an ^'■Infidel;'''' and so he was '■'■excommunicated." 
When the church has attained somewhat more of "the wisdom that is 
from above," she will take such men into her bosom, instead of casting 
them out ; and will show herself worthy of the communion of such 
men, by encouraging them in their work, and in going along with tliem 
to do it ! 

It is not to be denied, too, tliat Rogers did not pretend to know so 
much concerning a future life, as many otliers think tliat they know. 
But this he did know, 

" That if, as holiest men have deemed, there be 
A land of souls beyond that sable shore, 
To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee," — 

the same Being that rules in this world must rule in that ; — that there, 
as here, they will have served Him best, who have best served his chil- 
dren, by doing the most to help them who have most needed help. In 
this faith N. P. Rogers lived ; — in this he labored, and in this he died. 
" Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his !" 
His earthly labors are at an end. " He sleeps his long sleep, he has 
fought his last battle." He has no more sacrifices to offer here upon 
the altar of Truth, Liberty, and Humanity ; no more cherished friends 
to lose because he Avould not sacrifice his convictions or his principles, 



INTRODUCTION. 



to retain them. From his earthly toils and trials he is at rest I cannot 
but tliink that for him to die was gain, because I verily believe that for 
him to live was Christ ;* that is, tliat making little or no account of the 
name, he lived for the advancement of the cause of Christ ; the cause 
for which Christ himself lived, labored and died, namely, tlie redemption 
of universal man from slavery, spiritual and carnal ; the emancipation 
of man from the power and the fear of man ; the liberation of man, as 
man, from all dominion and all authority but tliat of Reason, Truth, 
and Right. 

Of Mr. Rogers, as a Avriter, I need say little. On this point, " he 
being dead, yet speaketh ;" and he speaks for himself as no one else 
can speak for him. He wrote without any thing of that " fear of man 
that bringeth a snare" to so many writers in tliis age of criticism and 
Reviews — as though he was not aware tliat such an animal as a critic 
had ever been created. He wrote because he had something to say, 
and, true to nature — for to him nature was truth — he spoke " right on," 
with the artlessness and simplicity of a child. He sets down things 
just as he sees and feels them ; using words not because others do, or 
do not use them, but because tliey are just the medium — the atmos- 
phere — through which others can see what he is looking at, just as he 
sees it. In one word, his style is his own, and nobody's else. Trans- 
parency, purity, simplicity, earnestness and force will be seen to charac- 
terize whatever he writes ; and when a reader has finished one of his 
paragraphs, the last question that he will ask himself will be, " Well, 
now, what does all that mean ?" — Though humor was by no means his 
forte, whenever he chose, he could use it with great effect In well- 
chosen words, Mr. Hildreth has said, " Many of his pieces have all the 
genial liumor of Lamb, with a higher seasoning of sprightly wit than 
Lamb ever attained to. He had, indeed, higher objects, and, of course, 
greater earnestness and spirit He was not, like Lamb, a mere writer 
for amusement, but one of those modern heroes whose sword is their pen. 
A champion for spiritual freedom and tlie right of private judgment, he 
will long be remembered and loved by many, to Avhom he first showed 
tlie way out of the house of bondage." 

This true friend of his race — especially of the wronged of his race — 
this dear friend of mine is gone. I know that all who knew him well, 
will say with Mr. French, when remembering what he was, and thinlcing 
tliat he is with us no longer, — " Our hearts are sad ; but our departed 
friend has left us a very pleasant memory. His righteous life and tri- 
umphant death lift our thoughts from tlie grave. In our sorrow let us 
not forget tlie slave. He still groans in his prison house, and the religion 

* Phil. i. 21. 



INTRODUCTION. 



of the land still sanctions the wrong. When deatli comes to us, may it 
find us, as it did our dear friend, with the harness on, and in the midst 
of the conflict" , 

Sunday, the 18th of October, tlie remains of N. P. Rogers were borne 
to the grave by a few loving and faithful friends. Having loved him, 
they loved him unto death. I well remember the day. It was a snowy 
day, — the first snow of our northern autumn. Winter seemed to have 
come upon us before his time. Returning from the humble chapel 
where I had led the worship of a small society, concerning whose faith 
" we know, that every where, it is spoken against,"* I could not but feel 
saddened by tlie early desolation and dreariness of the scene. Little 
did I thinli that the frost of death had already fallen, before its time, 
upon my poor friend Rogers, and that his cold remains were, even then, 
on their way, through falling snows, from his late home, to the " house 
appointed for all living." Yet so it was. And she, who had so bravely 
helped him bear his cross, watched by the side of his bed, and com- 
municated with his dear but distant friends, informing them that there 
was no hope left that her husband's life could long be spared to them 
and to her, was, with her children, — one of whom, two days before, had 
sung the father and husband to sleep with her sweet " Angels' Whis- 
per,"' — sitting, a widow in affliction, in the house that was left to them, 
O how desolate ! 

May I not hope that that little family choir — for the children all sing 
sweetly, — when gathered in their secluded mountain home, will some- 
times sing these lines, as a memorial not of their father only, but also 
of their fatlier's friend and theirs ; 

JNO. PIERPONT. 

THE FAMILY LAMENT. 

The " Angels' Whisper" stole, in song, upon his closing ear 
Through his own daughter's lips it came, so musical and clear, 
That scarcely knew the dying man what melody was there, 
The last of earth's, or first of heaven's, pervading all the air. 

Nor need he know : — The soul that's tuned in full accord with Right, 
Where'er it is, will harmonize with children of the light. 
Anathemas, the church's ban, or thunders hurled at him, 
Can never close his ears against the songs of seraphim. 

The love of right ! O, it was this that made our father strong : — 
The love of right,— that's yoked, for aye, to hatred of the wrong ; 
The love of right was in his heart above all other love, 
And made the Mountain Eagle there to nestle with the Dove. 

* Acts xxviii. 22. 



INTRODUCTION. 



That brave and loving heart is cold ; — the clods are on that breast, 
That always heaved with pity for the helpless and oppressed ; 
And we upon His care are cast, who long ago hath said, 
" Trust me, and db my will, and thou shalt verily be fed." 

Thou Father of the fatherless, — the widow's God and Guide, 

In thee we put our trust, for we have none to trust beside ! 

Thy servant, on whose arm we've leaned, hath gone to his reward : — 

The dust hath to the dust returned, — the spirit to its Lord. 

O, dreary was that parting day ! — October's earliest snow 

Was falling, as his coffined clay, so mournfully and slow, 

Was carried to the " narrow house," and made a silent guest, 

" Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." 

We know, it was a holy day ; — thrice holy now it is ! 
The day our Savior left his grave, our father went to his. 
But it was dreary, not the less, for Winter, ere its time. 
Was come, as death had come to him, in his autumnal prime. 

And Autumn's red and yellow leaves were eddying, thick and sere. 
On the snowy air, as slowly trod the bearers of the bier. 
Or, to the oaks around his grave, were clinging, dead and dry. 
And rustling, as the fitful wind went through them with a sigh. 

But Summer shall come round again, and dress in green his grave, 
And by its head-stone, oft shall kneel the liberated slave. 
And, all around, those oaks shall throw their broad and grateful shade, 
And birds, among the branches, sing their evening serenade. 

And daily shall the sunshine fall where sleeps a child of light. 
The moon look calmly down on one as pure as she is bright; 
And that true star, that from its post hath never swerved, nor can, 
Shall guard the grave of one as true to Freedom and to Man. 



A COLLECTION 



FROM THE 



NEWSPAPEE WRITINGS OF N. P. ROGERS, 



«THE PRESENCE OF GOD." 

[From the Herald of Freedom of August 11, 1838.] 

We wander a moment from our technical anti-slavery " sphere," 
to say, with permission of our readers, a word or two on a beau- 
tiful article under this head, in the Christian Examiner. It is 
from the pen of one of our highly gifted fellow-citizens, to whom 
the unhappy subjects of insanity, in this state, owe so much for 
the public charity now contemplated in their behalf It is writ- 
ten with great elegance, perspicuity and force of style — and what 
is more, it seems scarcely to want that spirit of heart-broken 
Christianity, so apt to be missing in the graceful speculations 
of reviewers, and may we not say, in the speculations of the ele- 
gant corps among whom the writer of the article is here found. 

We will find, briefly, what fault we can with the article. Its 
beauties need not be pointed out — they lie profusely scattered 
over its face. It is an article on the presence of God, and treats 
of our relations to Him. But does it set forth that relation, as 
involving our need of the Lord Jesus Christ, in order that we 
may be able to stand in it? For ourselves, we cannot contem- 
plate God — and dare not look towards Him, unconnected with 
Christ. Our writer seems boldly to look upon Him, as the 
strong-eyed eagle gazes into the sun. God is of purer eyes than 
to behold iniquity. He cannot look upon sin, but with abhor- 
rence. We have sinned ; therefore we fear to behold Him. In 
Christ, alone, is he our Father in heaven, and we his reconciled 
1 



THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 



children. In Christ, we dare take hold of his hand and of the 
skirts of his almighty garments. The Lord Jesus Christ and 
" him crucified," is the medium, through whom, alone, we dare 
look upon God, in his works, his providences or his grace. 
Sinless man might, without this medium. Fallen man may not. 
Like the Israelites at the mount of Sinai, he may " not break 
through unto the Lord to gaze," lest " he perish." 

The writer contemplates God in his works — but he seems, 
though awed, elevated and delighted at their grandeur, beauty 
and wisdom, to feel still baffled of the great end in their contem- 
plation. Does he not, we would ask him, feel the absence of 
some link in the chain of communication with this ineffable 
being — which might, if interrupted, anchor his soul securely 
within the veil, which, after all, continues to shroud him from 
communion and sight 1 Can he, in sight of the works of God, 
speak out and sing in the strains of the singer of Israel 1 Does 
he not experience, in view of them, an admiring enthusiasm and 
certain swellings of genius, rather than those spiritual heart- 
burnings felt by the two on the way to Emmaus, as they talked 
with the " stranger in Jerusalem ?" 

Here is the grand mistake of gifted humanity. Tired of the 
world — sick of its emptiness — shocked at its heartlessness — 
withdrawn from its unprincipled highway into the lonely by-path 
of a supererogatory morality, — moved by those "longings after 
immortality," which haunt forever the unbesotted spirit — it tries 
to find God in his works, and peradventure in the majesty of his 
word — not looking for him, however, in " the way" — seeking 
him along the high and ridgy road of a sort of spirito-intellectual 
philosophy, instead of down in the valley of humiliation. 

The writer speaks of the communion of God with our minds. 
This he seems to regard with chief interest. He mentions " the 
need of having attention" — meaning intellectual attention — 
" waked up to those old truths." " Listlessness of mind," he 
continues, " an inveterate habit of inattention to the existence 
of the Eternal Spirit, needs to be broken in upon. We need to 
help each other to escape a fatuity of mind on this subject, that 
we may feel that God's ark still rides o'er the world's waves, and 



THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 



that the burning bush has not gone out." There is an ** inat- 
tention," it is true ; but it is of the heart, and not merely of the 
mind — of the nature, and not of " habit" merely — a spiritual 
inattention or rather alienation from God, which must be broken 
in upon. It is not the creature of habit. Adam felt it in all 
its force, the very day of his first transgression. He heard the 
voice of God, which in his innocency he had hailed with joy, 
beyond all he felt at the beauties of Paradise, — heard it, Avalking 
in the garden, in the cool of the day, and he hid himself from 
the presence of the Lord God, among the trees of the garden. 
His wife also hid herself, for she too had transgressed — and we, 
their moral heirs, hide ourselves so to this day. They could 
walk in the garden in sight of the beautiful works of God, and 
perhaps admire the splendors of Eden ; but when they heard his 
voice, they hid themselves. Not from habit surely, that not being 
the creature of a day. There was " inveteracy," not of habit, 
but of fallen nature. It is that which must be " broken in upon," 
before we shall incline to come out from among the trees, to 
welcome the presence of God. It may be there is a figurative 
meaning also in this hiding among the trees from the presence of 
him who made those trees — and may we not deceive ourselves 
in supposing we contemplate God in his works, when in truth 
we are seeking to hide ourselves from his presence, among the 
glorious trees of this earth's garden ? 

The elegant writer will bear with us in our coarse commen- 
tary. We would not expend critical attention on the literary 
merits or marks of genius, in a production treating of our rela- 
tions to God. It is too awful and interesting a subject. We 
want reconciliation with God. That is the one thing needful. 
The crew of the ill-fated Pulaski wanted only one thing, when 
they were cast afloat upon the waves. When they retired to rest 
that night, each heart was tantalized with a thousand objects 
of desire. But when that explosion awoke them, they had all but 
cme, — life — the shore — something on which to float. That, all 
needed, and all felt the need Such is our need of reconciliation 
with God, to save us from greater depths than the sea. We have 
revolted from God. We are born universally in i^ state of alien- 



THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 



ation from him. The Scriptures and all experience teach this. 
We do not more certainly inherit the transmitted form of our 
fallen first-parents, than their descended nature. We are born 
with the need of being " born again." Of this we are sure. 
The truth of it and the effects of it press continually upon us, 
with the universality of the air upon our bodily systems. We 
cannot evade it. It is our fate, in the wisdom of God. We 
cannot escape it, any more than the Old world could the deluge. 
They saw an ark of Gopher wood, building by an enthusiastic 
old man. It eventually saved none of them, who refused to enter 
its pitchy sides. The old man forewarned them. He was a 
preacher of righteousness. But they were philosophers, and he 
a fanatic. He talked of rain and flood, — the breaking up of 
the fountains of the deep, and the opening of the windows of 
heaven. The sky looked blue — the sun rose and set gloriously, 
and broke out, as wont, after the showers. And though there 
were tokens about that despised old man, which at times made 
them turn up an apprehensive eye into the cloudless firmament — 
philosophy chose to risk it. The prediction was unnatural — 
irrational — it could not be so. They perished. 

We have an ark of safety, capacious enough, to be sure, to saot 
■the entire race of man. It will save only those who will enter 
it, — and the time of entering, as it was at the flood, is before the 
sky of probation is overcast. The door is shut now, as then, 
before the falling of the first great drops of the eternal thunder 
shower. 

The ark of safety, we need not say, is Christ. He is the Way, 
the Truth, and the Life. No man can come to the Father but 
by him. Whoever hath seen him, hath seen the Father, — and 
by him is the only manifestation of God's presence. The pre- 
sence of his power may be seen in all objects around us, — but 
his strange love to the children of men cannot be seen, but through 
Christ. As the mortally bitten Israelite could be healed only by 
looking at the brazen serpent, so the mortally sin-infected de- 
scendant of fallen man can live only by looking at the Son of 
Man in the midst of his ignominious crucifixion — even where he 
was " lifted up." 



THE DISCUSSION. 



God may be seen in his works, by him whose sins are forgiven. 
He may be seen, then, in his word — and the Bible is then as 
self-evidently the word of God, as the sun, the mountain and the 
ocean are his works. His providential care and government are 
then palpably felt. The soul can then take him by the paternal 
hand, and feel that infinite safety which puts all human appre- 
hension at rest. 

But we are forgetting that our Herald is a small sheet. We 
have not space to notice the exquisite beauties of our writer's 
production as a composition merely, or the argument it draws of 
God's presence from his works, and as it purports merely to notice 
this evidence of his presence, we will not here express our regret 
tliat the name of Christ is not mentioned in the article. 

May the gifted writer, if he be out of the ark of safety, not 
delay to enter in. Let him not tarry without, to gaze with the 
eye of elegant curiosity, on the scenery of this Sodom world, — 
but bow his neck, and " enter while there's room." And as we 
bespeak his immediate heed to the " one thing needful," — so we 
demand his pen, voice, influence, prayers, and active and open 
co-operation, in the deliverance of his fellow-countrymen from 

the CHAINS OF SLAVERY 



THE DISCUSSION. 

[From the Herald of Freedrm of Julv H, 1838.] 

The discussion goes on. It pervades, it possesses, it " arri^ 
tates" the land. It must be stopped, or slavery dies, and the col- 
ored man has his liberty and his rights, and Colonization is stipcr- 
sedcd. Can it not be stopped ? Cannot the doctors, the editors, 
the " property and standing," the legislatures^ congress, the mob, 
Mr. Gurley, somebody or other, some power or other, the govern- 
ors, his honor the Chief Justice Lynch ; cannot any body, or every 
body united, put down this discussion? Alas for the "peculiar 
institution !" it cannot be done. The club of Hercules could 
not strike it down ; it is as impalpable to the brute blow as the 
1* 



THE DISCUSSION. 



stately ghost of " buried Denmark" was to the " partisan" of 
Marcellus. It cannot be stopped or checked. It is unrestraina- 
ble as the viewless winds, or the steeds of Apollo. You hear it 
every where. The atmosphere is rife with it. " Abolition," 
" immediate," " compensation," " amalgamation," " inferior," 
"equal," " inalienable," "rights," "the Bible,' '' of one blood," 
" West Indies," " mobs," " arson," " petition," " gag-law," " John 
Quincy Adams," " Garrison." These are the words, and as 
familiar as household phrase. The air resounds to the universal 
agitation. Truth and conviction every where result, — the Genius 
of Emancipation moves triumphantly among the half-awakened 
people. And Slavery, aghast at the general outcry and the fatal 
discoveries constantly making of its diabolical enormities, gathers 
up its all for retreat or desperate death, as the case shall demand. 
The discussion can't be smothered — can't be checked — can't 
be abated — can't be endured by pro-slavery. The fiat has gone 
forth. It is registered in heaven. The colored man's humanity 
is ascertained rvud proved, and henceforth he is destined to liberty 
and honor. God is gathering his instrumentalities to purify this 
nation. A\*ar, Slavery and Drunkenness are to be purged away 
from it. The drunkard, that wont reform, will be removed from 
the earth's surface, and his corporeal shame hidden in her friendly 
recesses, — his spiritual " slianie," alas, to be "' everlasting" — 
with that unutterable " contempt" which must attend final im- 
penitence, as saith God. Those persisting in the brute practice 
of what is styled militarii, which is nothing more or less than 
human tigerism — rational brutality — hatred dressed up in regi- 
mentals — malignity cockaded, — and " all uncharitableness" plu- 
med and knapsacked, — homiddc under pay, and murder per order, 
all who persist in this beastly and bloody mania, and refuse to 
join the standard of universal non-resistance pf ace — will perish 
by the sword, or by some untimely touch t)f the Almighty, — for 
Christ hath said, " All they who take the sword shall perish with 
the sword;" and the period of accomplishment of his work on 
this little globe is at hand. Let the warrior of the land take 
warning. " A prudent man foreseeth," &:c. And slaveholders, 
pilferers of humanity ! those light-fingered ones, who " take 



THE DISCUSSION. 



without liberty" the very glory and essence of a man, — who put 
out that light which dazzles the eye of the sun, and would burn 
on, but for this extinction, when the moon hath undergone her 
final waning, — those traffickers in immortality, who sell a man 
" for a pair of shoes ;" those hope-extinguishers, heart-crushers, 
home-quenchers, family-dissolvers, tie-sunderers ; — oh, for a vo- 
cabulary — new, copious and original, of awful significancy and 
expression — that should avail us to shadow forth faintly to the 
apprehensions of mankind, the unutterable character of this new 
" ill," that hath befallen inheriting " flesh ;" an " ill" that " flesh" 
by nature was no< " heir to;" — oh, those man, woman and child- 
thieves, — those unnatural, ultra and extra cannibals, who devour 
their own flesh ; whose carniverous monstrosity is not limited to 
the blood and flesh of the stranger, — whose voracity invades the 
forbidden degrees, and eats its near relations within the matr - 
monial prohibitions, — son-eaters and daughter-consumers — who 
grow children to sell, and put into their coffers, to buy bread 
withal, the price of their own-begotten offspring ; thus eating 
" themselves a third time," as Pope says, " in their race" — " the 
cubless tigress in her jungle raging" is humanity and sympathy, 
compared to them : she " rages" when the hunter hath borne off 
her bruised young, and given her savage bosom the pang of ma- 
ternal bereavement. She would waste her mighty nature to a 
■shadow, and her strong frame to a skeleton, ere she would appease 
her hunger by profaning the flesh of her own cubs ! Slavehold- 
ers ! American slavehuldcrs, republicnn slaveholders, liberty 
slaveholders, Christianity slaveholders, church-member slavehold- 
ers, minister slaveholders, doctor of divinity slaveholders, church 
slaveholders, missionary slaveholders, " Board of Commissioner" 
slaveholders, monthly concert slaveholders, Bible Society slave- 
holders, and Bible withholders ! What will the coming mil- 
lennium say to you, or do with you? What disposition will it 
make of you and your system, should it burst upon you when 
It is in the full tide of experiment ! the land smoking with it ! 
Will not the glorious morn and opening dawn of Christ's king- 
dom prove flaming fire to devour you from the face of the earth? 
The millennial day pouring in its living light upon scenes, whose 



THE DISCUSSION. 



enormity shrouds the natural sun, what will become of the actors 
in these scenes? O for the warning voice tliat once affrighted 
Nineveh, and clad her nation in sackcloth, from the king on the 
throne to the beggar on the dunghill ; that laid a people in ashes ! 
But it may not be. Another fate, we fear, attends this last of 
republics. Warning is esteemed as mockery, and admonition as 
frenzy. 

Shall we hold our peace amid scenes like these ? Shall we 
argue and -persuade, be courteous, convince, induce, and all that? 
No — we shall attempt no such thing, for the simple reason that 
such things are entirely uncalled for, useless, foolish, inadequate. 

Argue with slavery, or argue about it; argue about a sinking 
ship, or a drowning man, or a burning dwelling ! Convince a 
sleeping family, when the staircase and roof are falling in, and 
tlie atmosphere is loaded to suffocation with smoke ! " Address 
the understanding," and " soothe the prejudices," when you 
see a man walking down the roof in his sleep, en a three-story 
house ! Bnndy compliments and arguments with the somnambu- 
list, on " Table Rock," when all the waters of lake Superior are 
thundering in the great Horse Shoe, and deafening the very war 
of the elements ! Would you not shout to him with a clap of 
thunder through a speaking trumpet — if you could command it — 
if possible to reach his senses in his appalling extremity? Did 
Jonah argufy with the city of Nineveh, — " Yet forty davs," 
cried the vagabond prophet, " and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" 
That was his salutation. And did the " property and standing" 
turn up their noses at him, and set the mob on to him? Did the 
clergy discountenance him, and call him extravagant, misguided, 
a divider of churches, a disturber of parishes? What would 
have become of that city, if they had done this? Did they 
" approve his •principles,'' but dislike his " measures" and his 
" spirit V 

Slavery must be cried down, denounced down, ridiculed down, 
and pro-slavery with it, or rather before it. Slavery will go when 
pro-slavery starts. The sheep will follow, when the bell-wether 
leads. Down then with the bloody system ! out of the land with 
it, and out of the world with it — into the Red sea with it ? Men 



CALL TO A CONVENTION. 



shatt't be enslaved in this country any longer. Women and child- 
ren shanH be flogged here any longer. If you undertake to hin- 
der us, the worst is your own. The press is ours. Demolish it, 
if you please, — muzzle it, you shall nerer. Shoot down the 
Lorejoys you can ; and if your skirts are not red enough with 
his blood, dye them deeper with other murders. You can do it 
with entire impunity. You can get the dead indicted and tried 
along with you, and the jury will find you all not guilty together : 
and " public sentiment" will back you up, and say you had ample 
provocation. To be sure, you will not escape the vengeance of 
Heaven ; but who cares for that,, in a free and christian country ? 
You will eome to an untimely end ; — but that, you know, is noth- 
ing to a "judicious," " well-regulated," " christian spirit !" 
But this is all fanaticism. Wait and see. 



THE CONVENTION. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Aogust 18, 1838.] 

Thawks to our young brethren for their hearty — noble-souled 
committee's call. Now for obeying it. Now see if our abo- 
litionists, who " remember those in bonds," &c. will spend a day 
or two to make it manifest. We would spend time chiefly, bretii- 
ren, so far as traveling expenses go. Our brethren, fortunately 
for the cause, have not much " property or standing." They 
should not lay out much of either on the road. The grog-selling 
inns should receive little of anti-slavery patronage. The money 
is too sacred for their foul coffers. The " cold chunk," or the 
johnny cake, or the saw-dust pudding, (Franklin's editorial din- 
ner,) any thing on the road, and all the mites for the Society 
treasury. We have got to cure this glorious slaveholding repub- 
lic of its character, and to pay all tlie doctors' bills, and we must 
gpend little, very little, for confectionaries. 

We echo the summons of the committee of arrangements. 
From our Moosehillock position we send it on, and back, to every 



10 CALL TO A CONVENTION. 

point of compass. To uooe but the whole-hearted, fully-com- 
mitted, cross-the-Rubicon spirits — men of more heart than 
" But" — who can leave home for the sake of their principles — 
who can deny themselves, and " lap the water, as the dog lap- 
peth," for their thirst. From the sea coast, the Green Mountain 
west, the sky-seeking north, and the New Hampshire south — old, 
young and mid-aged — gray bearded and beardless — the sturdy 
and the infirm — from all streams and all valleys, and along all 
hill-sides — from rich " old Cheshire," — from Rockingham, with 
her horizon setting down away to the salt sea. — Strafford, from 
•the " «lide"-scarred mountains of Sandwich to the rainbow mists 
of the Cocheco — from Pigwacket to Winnipisseogee — Strafford 
of the lakes — up from old Hillsborough, where the staunch yeo- 
man drives his team from the mouths of Piscataquog and Souhe- 
gan, up to the very springs of the Contoocook, — young Sullivan, 
where she stretches from Sunapee to the valley of the Connecti- 
cut, and from the falls of Walpole to the cedars of Lebanon, — 
Merrimack — ^fcey-stone of the Granite State — abolitionists " of 
our county of Merrimack," start at day-break for the Conven- 
tion, — ^from wliere the sun sets behind Kearsarge, even to M'here 
ihe rises gloriously over Closes A'^orris' own town of Pittsfield ; 
and from Amoskeag to Ragged Mountains, — Coos — Upper Coos, 
home of the everlasting hills, send out your bold advocates of 
human rights — wherever they lay scattered by lonely lake or In- 
dian stream — or "Grant," or " Location" — from the trout-haunted 
brooks of the Araoriscoggin, and where the adventurous stream- 
let takes up iits mountain march for the St. Lawrence. — Scattered 
and insulated men, wherever the light of philanthropy and liberty 
has beamed in upon your solitary spirits, come down to us like 
vour streams and clouds : — and our own Grafton, all about among 
vour dear hills and yorur mountain-flanked valleys — whether you 
home along the swift Ammonoosuck, the cold Pemigewasset or 
the ox-bowed Connecticut ; from the " heights of Dorchester," 
and the " vale of Hebron" — from Canaan, that land oi promise 
to the negro student boy — and from anti-slavery Campton — come 
from the meadows of Alexandria — one and all abolitionists of 
Grafton — ^Lyme, the ipeerless town of Lyme, the native town of 
teir^perance. 



PATIENCE OF ABOLITIONISTS. 1] 



Abolitionists of New Hampshire I your brethren in bondage 
call loudly upon you for help — they clank their chains — they 
rattle their fetters — they lift up the cry of despair — will you hear 
them? Remember what God is doing for your cause. Hark, 
that shout from the isles of the sea ! It is the emancipation cry 
of the West Indies — God hath given them liberty. Their deliv- 
erance has come — He is drawing nigh to us. We shall hear 
Him, or perish. And if this nation is marked out for destruc- 
tion, let abolitionists remember Rahab of Jericho. We are slow, 
brethren, dishonorably slow, in a cause like ours. Our feet 
should be " as hinds' feet." " Liberty lies bleeding." The 
leaden-colored wing of slavery obscures the land with its baleful 
shadow. Let us come together, and inquire at the hand of the 
Lord what is to be done. 



[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 1, 183o.] 

"Only ye may opine it frets my patience, Mr. Osbaldistone, to be 
hunted like an otter, or a seal^h, or a salmon upon the shallows, and tliat 
by my very friends and neighbors." — Rob Roy. 

Whose patience has been fretted, if it had not been fret-proof, 
like the abolitionists' ? Have they not been hunted like an otter, 
or a salmon among the shallows, or a partridge upon the moun- 
tains ; or like David among the cliffs of Ziph and the rocks of 
the wild goats 1 And every body seems to think it is all as natu- 
ral as life, and that they should bear it, and be thankful it is no 
worse. How they have been belied and slandered and insulted, 
by a stupid pro-slavery community ! How church brethren and 
sisters have scowled upon them, and trifled with their rights and 
their feelings, as though they had no more of either than a " nig- 
ger !" How has the murderous scorn been extended from their 
poor, down-trodden — mark the phrase — down-trodden — not merely 
stamped upon, for once, or any given number of times, — but 
every time — by the common walking footstep of community, — 
trodden on as universally as the path of the highway — " down 



1-3 PATIENCE OF ABOLITIONISTS. 

trodden," indeed ! How has the scorn felt for the poor colored 
man, been extended to the abolitionist, and how he has borne it, 
with almost the " patient sufferance" of the " free negro," or the 
Jew in Venice, — until sufferance is become " the badge of all 
our tribe." And what avails it? "The brotherhood" have 
fallen into the idea, that we also are " an inferior race," and that 
we are exceedingly out of our place, when we claim the common 
rights of humanity. As to the rights of citizenship, they do not 
dream that any appertain to us. See with what calm, summer- 
day serenity they look on, while we are mobbed. They think 
no more of it, than they do when a lane of " free niggers" is 
" smoked out" by " public sentiment" in New York or Philadel- 
phia, Who cared for the outrages of the great Concord mob, in 
September, 1835 1 " Tremendous public excitement !" shouted 
the N. H. Patriot — as if another revolution had been fought. 
Tremendous public excitement ! A grand popular victory. Vic- 
tory indeed it was — but over what? Over innocency, humanity, 
the law of the land, the public peace ! An odd victory to boast 
of — What a " frolic after Thompson," (or to that effect) ex- 
claimed the merry N. H. Courier. — O, what a joke ! How funny 
and frolicsome the people were after Thompson ! How they did 
frisk and caper, and how masterly funny they did chase him, and 

surround Neighbor 's dwelling-house ! O, what a sportive 

company of them got together, and how they did surround that 
house by moonlight, and what a merry time on't they caused in 
that dwelling ! 

O " riddle-cum-riddle-cum-riglit ! 
What a time we had, that Friday night!" 
He, he, he — hah, hah, hah ! ! ! 

Hung be the heavens in black. Out, moon — and hide, stars, 
so that ye look not on and blench your light, at sight of such 
scenes. " Frolic !" Was the Alton night-scene a frolic ? Was 
the hellish-gathering about that ware-house, rendering the dun 
night hideous, a joke — a fracas — " an abolition frolic ?" 

The time will come, when these deeds will be appreciated by 
the people of this country. Ay, it is at hand. We wait patient- 



DR. FARMER DEAD. X3 



ly, but not silently. "The brotherhood" may fix upon us its 

evil eye of menace and " frolic." They shall hear of their 

merry doings. If we cannot speak freely, we desire not to 
remain on the slavery-cursed soil. We call upon the people of 
the land, to look to their liberties. We have no freedom of 
speech, no liberty of the press, no freedom of assembly. The 
sovereign and tyrant of the country is Slavery. He holds his 
court in the South, and rules the vassal North by his vicegerent 
the mob, — or as Hubbard Vfin'sXow preaches it, " tlic brotherhood." 
We owe no allegiance to either. We shall pay none. 



DR. FARMER DEAD. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 1, 1838.] 

We were amazed as well as deeply afflicted, at the death of 
this distinguished and most excellent man. His departure sur- 
prised us — invalid as he long has been, and feeble as was his hold 
on life — so insensible are we to the uncertainty and frailty of 
mortal existence 1 We have lost a highly valued personal friend, 
as well as our cause a faithful, devoted and invaluable advocate. 
We could weep for ourselves as well as for the poor slave, who 
does not know his loss. But it is not a time to weep. Survivors 
on the field do not pause in thick of the fight, to lament comrades 
or chieftains falling around them. 

The departed Farmer lived and died a devoted abolitionist. 
We proclaim this amid the notes of his requiem and the tolling 
of his knell — in the ears of the scorner of the supplicating slave 
and of bleeding liberty. Admirers of his distinguished worth — 
his admirable industry — his capacity — his usefulness — his blame- 
less life — who felt awed at his virtues, while he lived almost in- 
visibly among men — mingling with the busy throng of life scarcely 
more than now his study-worn frame reposes in the grave — know 
all, and be reminded all, that Farmer was in zeal, in devotion, 
in principles and in measures, not a whit behind the very chiefest 
3 



14 DR. FARMER DEAD 

abolitionist. No heart beat more ardently than his, in the great 
cause of human rights — or more keenly feit the insults, the 
inhumanity and the ruffian persecutions, heaped upon its friends. 
How deep was his mortification at the brutal and ignoble treat- 
ment of the generous and gifted Thompson, and with what agoniz- 
ing solicitude did his heart throb, as the life of that innocent and 
most interesting and wonderful stranger was hunted in our streets ! 
How freely would he have yielded up his own sickness-wasted 
form, to save his friend ! Scorners of the slave — sneerers at the 
negro's plea — ruthless invaders (whoever you are) of the hearth 
of hospitality and the sanctities of home, we point you to the 
fresh grave of Farmer. To the grave of Kimball, too, his 
beloved brother — that young martyred heart — who still pleaded 
among you, unheeded but faithfully, the cause of the suffering 
and the dumb, when his voice was hollow with consumption — 
whose mild eye still beamed with remembrance of those in bonds, 
when lustrous with the hectic touch of death. To the grave of 
young Bradley too, who bowed his beautilul head to the de- 
stroyer, like the " lily of the field" surcharged with rain, remem- 
bering the down-trodden slave amid all the promises and allure- 
ments of youth and genius. And to other graves recent in your 
peopled church-yard, into which we should have looked with 
heart-broken disconsolation, but for thought of the resurrection. 
To these graves we point you — as you ponder on the past — not 
now to be recalled — registered for eternity. 

Advocates of the slave too, a voice from the church-yard 
speaks also to you. There is neither knowledge, nor wisdom, 
nor device there, where the departed faithful lie, and whither 
you hasten. Your brothers and sisters in bondage descend thi- 
ther in the darkness of brutal heathenism, from lives that know 
no consolation. What thy hands find to do, do with thy might. 



CONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY. ^ 

CONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 8, 1838.] 

The second " unprovided-for difficulty" of the Keene Senti- 
nel, in the way of the anti-slavery movement is, that " slaves are 
property." We deny that they are property, or that they can be 
made so. We will not argue this, for it is self-evident. A man 
cannot be a subject of human ownership ; neither can he be the 
owner of humanity. There is a clear and eternal incompetency 
on both sides, — on the one to own man, and on the other to be 
owned by man. A man cannot alienate his right to liberty and 
to himself, — still less can it be taken from him. He cannot part 
with his duty to be free — his obligation to liberty, any more than 
his right. He is under obligation to God and humanity and his 
own immortality, to retain his manhood and to exercise it. He 
cannot become the property of another, any more than he can 
part with his human nature. It would be utterly repugnant to all 
the purposes of his creation. He is bound to perform a part, 
which is totally incompatible with his being owned by any body 
but himself; which requires that he keep himself free. He can't 
be property, any more than he can be a horse, or a literal ass. 
We commend our brethren of the Sentinel to the eighth Psalm, 
as a divine authority touching the nature and destination of man. 
He can't be property — he can't be appropriated. His mighty 
nature cannot be coped by the grasp of ownership. Can the 
Messrs. Sentinel be appropriated ? We put it sternly to them, in 
behalf of their, and our own, and the slave's common nature, — 
for we feel that it is all outraged by their terrible allegation. 
Can the editors of the Sentinel become property ? the goods and 
chattels, rights and hereditaments of an owner 1 If they can't, 
no man can. If any man can, they can. Can the Hon. Mr. 
Prentiss, with all his interesting qualities and relations, by any 
diabolical jugglery, be converted into a slave, so as to belong to 
one of his fallen, depraved fellow-men ? Can he suppose the idea ? 
Is he susceptible of this transmutation ? He is, if any body is. 



16 CONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY. 

Can he be transferred, by virtue of a few cries and raps of a 
glib-tongued auctioneer 1 Could a pedler sell him, from his tin 
cart ? Could he knock him off, bag and baggage, to the boldest 
bidder 1 Let us try it. No disrespect to our esteemed senior. — 
We test his allegation, that a man is property. If one man can 
be, any man can — himself, or his stately townsman, Major-Gene 
ral Wilson, who would most oddly become the auction platform. 
If a man can be property, he can be sold. If any man can be, 
every man can — Mr. Prentiss, Gen. Wilson, Rev. Mr. Barstow — 
every man. Let us try to vendue the Sentinel. Advertise him, 
if you please, in the Keene paper. On the day, produce him — 
bring him on — let his personal symmetries be examined and de- 
scanted on — his sacred person handled by the sacrilegious man- 
jockey, — let him be ordered to shift positions, and assume atti- 
tudes, and display to the callous multitude his form and propor- 
tions — his points, as the horse-jockey would say. How would all 
this comport with the high sense of personal honor, wont to be 
entertained by the Sentinel ? How would he not encounter a thou- 
sand deaths rather than submit to it ? How his proud spirit, in- 
stinct with manhood, would burst and soar away from the scene ! 
Who bids ? an able-bodied, capable, fine, healthy, submissive, 
contented boy, about fifty — sound wind and limb — sold positively 
for no fault — a field hand — come of real stock, — faithful, can 
trust him with gold untold — will nobody start him? — shall we 
have a bid? — will nobody bid for the hoy? Now we demand 
of our respected brother, whose honor is as sacred in our regard 
as in his own, what he thinks of the chattelism of a slave, — for 
we indignantly lay it down as an immovable principle that the 
Hon. John Prentiss is as legitimate a subject of property and of 
sale, as any the lowest of his race. 

We dispose of the position that " slaves are property," by 
utterly and indignantly denying the possibility of it. We will 
rescue our brethren of the Sentinel from the imputation of this 
murderous idea, by erasing the semicolon after " property," and 
making but one sentence of the second " difficulty," turning it 
into an opinion that " slaves are property by the constitution and 
the laws ;" throwing the infamy on to the old framers of the 



CONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY. 17 

constitution, and all of us who have lived under it, with power 
to amend or nullify it. It would sink the whole of us. Consti- 
tution and laws ! Is the Sentinel of opinion that a constitution 
could be framed by men, or by existences in the shape of men, 
that, instead of protecting human liberty and rights, should anni- 
hilate them 1 A constitution to ensLive men ! AVhat would you 
say of a British constitution, that enslaved a British subject 1 
Would you not scout the idea of it — of the British possibility of 
it ? and can it be done here, and ivas it done here by revolution- 
ary sages, who could not brook the restraints of British liberty ? 
A constitution, that should provide for the enslavement of a man, 
would be a legal abortion. The bare engrossing of it would nul- 
lify it. It would perish by spontaneous annulment and nullifica- 
tion. It could not survive its ordination — nor could its infamous 
framers. We deny that an enslaved man is property by the con- 
stitution, and we might deny that any man can be enslaved under 
our constitution, and consequently, that he could be chattelized, 
if a slave were admitted to be property. Things may be appro- 
priated — persons may not. They are self-evidently not suscep- 
tible of appropriation or ownership. By the constitution every 
body is spoken of as a person — no mention is made of human 
things. If a slave is alluded to, in that instrument, as a possible 
existence in point of fact, it is under the name of "person." 
" Three fifths of all other persons" — " migration or importation 
of persons^' — " no person held to service." These are the only 
instances in it where allusion is made to slaves, — and it no more, 
in those allusions, sanctions enslaving, than it does " piracies 
and felonies on the high seas," which it also expressly recognizes, 
as they say of slavery. So it says " person," where it solemnly 
asserts that " no person can be deprived of liberty or property, 
but by due process of law." This clause prohibits the slightest 
approaches to enslaving, or holding in slavery, which is continued 
enslaving. No person's property can be taken from him ; not 
his life even ; infinitely less his liberty, without due legal pro- 
cess. It is idle to say, that the framers of the constitution, or 
those who adopted it and acted under it, did not mean to save the 
colored man from slavery, by this clause. In law they are to be 



18 CONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY. 

held to mean so, because they said so. The intent of the framers 
is now to be gathered from what they said in the instrument it- 
self — not their colloquies at the time or before or after — but what 
they put down in imperishable black and white. It is what they 
inscribed on the parchment for all time, that they legally intend- 
ed, and there we are to go to get at their intent. If the words 
are obscure and ambiguous, we may gather their intent by aid of 
concomitant circumstances, &/C. But there is no ambiguity here. 
The clearest words and best understood and most trimly defined 
of any we have, here set forth the essential doctrine, (without 
which a community of thieves and pirates could scarcely be kept 
together,) that life, liberty and property are sacred. Enslave 
man and leave him these three, and you may do it, maugre this 
clause of the constitution. However, you must leave him, by 
virtue of other clauses, a few other incidentals, such as compul- 
sory process for calling in all witnesses for him, cf whatever 
color ; the inviolate right to be secure in person, house, papers 
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures ; right 
of trial by jury in all cases over twenty dollars' value ; the free 
exercise of religion, of speech, of the press, of peaceable assem- 
bly and of petition ; the civil rights of republican government, 
which is guarantied to him in every state in this Union ; the 
privileges and immunities of citizens in every state ; in short, 
you must allow him a string of franchises, enumerated accident- 
ally in that part of the old compact, called the preamble, viz., 
justice, domestic tranquillity, common defence, g^tne.ral welfare, 
and, finally, the blessings of liberty to himself and to his pos- 
terity ; — moreover you may add, in repetition, — for in securing 
the.se breath-of-life sort of rights, people run a little into superflu- 
ity of words — you may add the unsuspendible privilege of //«6ffl'5 
corpus — the old writ of liberty ; — and perfect exemption from all 
attainder, or enslaving a man's children on his account. We 
will mention one more — that is the uninfringible right to keep 
and bear arms. All these and many other riglits and innnunities, 
" too numerous to be mentioned," are secured to him by adaman- 
tine provisions in the constitution^ and if you can chattelize him 
under them, so that Austin Woolfolk can trade in him, at your 



CONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY. 19 

capital, or Wade Hampton or the American Board, can buy him 
and use him up in their service, or Doctor Ezra Styles Ely spec- 
ulate in his soul and body, then your doctrine, Messrs. Sentinel, 
is sound, that he is recognized as property by the constitution. 

We claim some exceptions, however, in case we cannot over- 
throw slavery in the slave states, by force of the national consti- 
tution. We cannot allow you to enslave any body in old Virginia. 
Look at her law paramount in our caption, declaring the birth- 
right, INALIENABLE LIBERTY OF ALL MEN. In Maryland the 
right is constitutionally set forth a little stronger. You must not 
enslave a man in Maryland, — and we can't allow you to lay a 
finger on his liberties in the district of Columbia, because the 
constitutions of Virginia and Maryland are still paramount law- 
there, by congressional adoption, at the acceptance of the ces- 
sions. And if he ruifs away from the district or a territory, or 
either of those two states, we can't allow you to arrest him and 
send him back. 

We ask our legal friends, who think lightly of this " fanat- 
icism," to look into this constitutional and legal matter of slave- 
holding. We would like especi;illy, that some of the neighbors 
of the Sentinel w^ould give some exposition, during the coming 
convention, of the lawfulness of enslaving people in this coun- 
try. We ask the Keene lawyers how this is. We want " the 
opinion of the court." 

For ourselves we venture the opinion, in light of w^hat glim- 
merings of law scintillate about our vision, that holding a man in 
slavery is a violation of the law of this land, and of every part of 
it, not excepting our gory-fingered sister Arkansas, or our car- 
nage-dripping sister Alabama, the haunt of christian enterprise 
from New England and the worn-out slave states in the north. 
A constitution that can avail to protect republican liberty to a 
single member of this community, inviolably secures it to every 
man, and condemns and prohibits slavery. It cannot otherwise 
be. Slavery is a mere matter of fact — in the face of the consti- 
tution — in the face of each state constitution — in the face of 
every court of justice which soundly administers the law of any 
state — in face of every thing, but a tyrant public sentiment, and 
a diabolical American practice. 



20 CONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY. 

The enslaved of the country are as much entitled to their 
liberty as any of us, by the law as it is. They have a right to 
throw off all violation of it by force, if they cannot otherwise. 
Nay, it is their duty to do so, if they can, — for it is not injury 
merely, that they are submitting to — not wrongs. They are 
rendered incapable of suffering injury — incompetent to endure 
wrong. The accursed system, that preys upon them, makes 
things of them — exterminates their very natures. This they may 
not submit to. They ought to prevent it, at every expense. 
They ought to resist it, as the Christian should the devil, for it 
wars upon the nature of man, and devours his immortality. If 
they could heave off the system by an instantaneous and uni- 
versal effort, they ought to do it. Individually we wish they 
could do it, and that they toould do it. We may be wrong in 
this opinion — but we entertain it. If our white brethren at the 
South were slaves, we should wish them instantaneous deliv- 
erance by insurrection, if this would bring it to them. We wish 
our colored brethren the same. We do not value the bodily lives 
of the present white generation there a straw, compared to the 
horrible thraldom, in which they hold the colored people, and we 
value their lives as highly as we do the colored people's. But 
insurrection can't effect it. It must be done by the abolitionists. 
They must annihilate the system by force of their principles, and 
as fast as possible. And they must increase their speed. Men 
will have to groan and pant in absolute brutality, with their high 
and eternal natures bound down and strangled amid the folds of 
this enslaving devil, until we throw it off. To the work then, and 
Heaven abandon the tardy ! If you wish to save your white 
brethren and yourselves, we commend you to this work, in sharp 
earnest. We tell you, once for all, there is no time to be lost ! 

There is no end to the theme — there must be to this article. 
We deny the truth and existence of the Sentinel's two difficulties, 
and if, in fact, they both existed, our movement " provides for 
them." The people collectively have the power to declare slavery 
a crime in the slave states. Congress has the power to do what 
amounts to the same thing — by direct action. They can declare 
it criminal in the capital, and how long would it be esteemed 



COLOxNIZATION LOVE AND "LOGIC 21 

innocent elsewhere ? They can punish enslaving in the district, 
and the man-traffic between the states as piracy. Lex talionis 
would enslave the perpetrators — but that would be devilish, and 
ought not to be inflicted. But if hanging is lawful in any case, 
it is in this. 

If the people collectively and Congress have no legal power 
over the slavery of the slave states, abolitionists have the power, 
ample and adequate, and they will "provide for the difficulty." 

The constitution and the laws do not recognize the slaves as pro- 
perty. We call for the proof. The Sentinel avers it. Let them 
point us to the spot where. And could they do this, the aboli- 
tionists have the power (consult rule of three for the time it will 
take) to change and redeem both the constitution and the laws 
and transmute this property back again to humanity. 



COLONIZATION LOVE AND "LOGIC." 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 8, 1838.] 

"abolition logic." 
" Xot hate of one's neig-libor." We prove it to be hate, because it 
wants to send off. Hatred repels, and would expel. Love attracts, 
draws, wislies to detain. Colonization proposes to rid the land of col- 
ored people. It therefore, cannot love them. Its love is mere pretence. 
— Herald of Freedom. 

This argument, poor as it is, with hardly speciousness enouoh to 
deceive a sensible boy of six years old, is tlie same that was used by 
George Thompson, in our debate with him in Boston. But how will 
this argument work ? A New Hampshire father sends off his son to 
make his fortune on the rich lands of the West. Therefore lie haies 
him. A Boston merchant sends off his son to Europe or tlie East Indies, 
that he may extend liis schemes of enterprise, and acquire wealtii. 
Therefore he hates him. We send off missionaries to barbarous nations, 
that they may extend the blessings of Christianity, and receive in a 
future world tlie rewards of those that turn many to righteousness. 
Therefore we hale these missionaries. The consent of those who depart 
seems to make no difference in the view of this sage editor. "We 
prove it to be hate because it wants to send o^" 

It is a little ludicrous that the editor of the Herald should actually kill 
his own argument, even before he reaches the bottom of his column. 
" It won't hurt a slave to send him to Africa. It won't, to send him any 



22 rOLOiNIZATION LOVE AND " LOGIC." 

where out of the infernal regions. We had rather he might get to 
Canada, — but if lie can't go tliere — or to tlie West Indies — or to Eng- 
land — or France — or Spain, or Turkey, or Algiers — or any otlier com- 
paratively free country under heaven — why, rather tlian remain in Amer- 
icEi, among our Colonizationists, let him go to Liberia — or to tlie bottom 
of tlie sea — or to the sharks. No monster of the deep would devour 
him with tlie cruel tooth of our republicanism." 

He also proposes, in another article, to colonize slaves in Canada. 
Seriously, we tliink there are sti'ong indications of insanity in the Her- 
ald. 

The above is from the Rev. R. R,. Gurley, Secretary and 
chief engineer of the American Colonization Society — that grand 
" American system" of machinery for clearing this country of 
free colored people, by a sort of suction-pump force, called " con- 
sent." They say, however, the " nicgeks" come hard ; and 
though the pump draws upon them, like doctor's instruments 
upon a tooth, yet they stick to the soil like a lamprey eel to the 
rocks ; and though the Secretary " hangs on like a dog to a root," 
they " hang back, like a dog going to the gallows." Resist 
sternly, colored friends ! " Abide in the ship." The land shall 
soon be indeed your country and your home. Lay your bones 
in it. Your tyrants and persecutors will go and evangelize Af- 
rica, themselves, when they really wish her evangelized. 

The wily Secretary has ventured upon a little article of ours, 
with true Tracy philology and word-hiuiting. " Send off." The 
magnificent " statesman" here finds a field for the scope of his 
continental philanthropy. The argument, he says, is the same 
that was used by George Thompson. All the better for that. 
George Thompson is an authority. lie is a mm of instinctive 
and intuitive judgment on this question. But it is a poor argu- 
ment, says the Secretary, " with hardly speciousness enough to 
deceive a sensible school boy of six years old." Any argument 
is always poor in the eyes of the Secretary, that is clear of spe- 
ciousness and false show, and that can't deceive sensible school 
boys. We don't intend to u^e specious arguments, — " showy, 
plausible, superficially not solidly right," as Walker defines them. 
The Secretary hud better not use any more of them. " Fair 
play is a jewel." 

*' How will this argument work ?" Try it and sec, Secretary. 



COLONIZATION LOVE AND "LOGIC." 2? 

You don't try it. You put different cases. You speak of farm- 
ers sending away sons for their benefit and fortunes. We speak 
of sending off — a sending off to git rid of. Farmers don't send 
off their sons, unless they get angry, and forget their nature, and 
disinherit tliem. Tiien they send them off. This sending to 
the West is not true in fact. The sons want to go from New 
Hampshire rocks to the prairied West. They have heard stories 
about it ahnost as extravagant and false as the Secretary tells 
about the death-haunted capes of Liberia, where bones lie bleach- 
ing as they do in the valley of the fabled Upas. The father wants 
them to stay tvith him, if he has got land for them, and if he 
han't, he tcould go with thcra. That is the way the father sends 
off his sons. Does the Secretary send off the dear colored people 
so? Would he accompany them? Let him go and edit at Cape 
Palmas, and sing his ditty of the " African steeples" about among 
king Joe Harris' people. They would admire his tall presence 
and his fine head, as the Cossacks did Murat on his black char- 
ger. No. The Secretary loves — " society," that has got more 
" frarne-work" in it. The dragon take Liberia, for all his going 
there ! It is a grand country for " free niggers ;" but the Secre- 
tary belongs to another race. 

" The Boston merchant sends off his son," &c. Whoever 
heard of such a sending off? Would the weeping father, as the 
vessel, with his dear boy on board, was clearing the harbor and 
standing out into the wide sea, tell the disconsolate mother and 
the brothers and sisters — all in tears — "I've sent off Charles?" 
Sent him off! for shame. Secretary ! If you had instanced a 
Boston merchant, who had a poor, miserable, profligate, drunken, 
prodigal son, that had exhausted his paternal nature, and forged 
his name to checks — whom he did not wish to see hanged at 
home, for the disgrace it would bring on the family, and he had 
shipped him aboard a man-of-war for the Mediterranean — or a 
whaler for a three years' chance among the storms of the cape, 
and the grampuses of the arctic circle, peradventure to come 
back, and pcradverture not, then you might talk of a father's 
sending his son off. But that comes too near colonizing, for the 
Secretary's purpose,- -only he wants to ship the innocent — the 



24 COLONIZATION LOVE AND "LOGIC." 

blameless — the unoffending — guilty of nothing but want of the 
roseate hue of the beauteous, Absalom-looking Secretary. 

" We seiid off missionaries," &c. Only to Liberia, Secretary. 
We send out to every other quarter. Note this peculiarity, 
reader, in our American efforts to evangelize the world. We 
send out white, educated, college-learned, beneficiary, Andover- 
finished theologians to those people we have never enslaved ; and 
to our old human hunting-ground we send off " abated nuisan- 
ces,^' called " free niggers," — sent off " toith their own consent.'' 
(" He 'ticed him out of the field," says the witness ; " 'ticed him 
clear out." How did lie 'tice him? said the court. " O, he 
'ticed him with a pitchfork!") We had the curiosity to look, in 
this very number of the Secretary's " Statesman," to see what he 
called the sending of missionaries. He has a deal to say about 
love to the heathen. We lit upon " Missions to Liberia," the 
first thing almost. It is not the Secretary's own, but his faithful 
Achates, R. McDowell's. He gives us the very technical phrase 
for missionary sending ; but there is no off to it. " The first 
mission, established in Liberia," says McD., " was the Swiss 
mission, &c., sent out by Rev. Dr. Bleinhardt," &c. 

Don't talk of sending off sons and missionaries, any more, Mr. 
Secretary. It is too " specious." 

The Secretary says, we " ludicrously kill our argument before 
we get down our column." What is our argument ? That 
sending off our free colored people, to rid the country of them, 
is proof of hatred towards them. How do we kill it '? Why, by 
saying it won't hurt a slave to send him aicay. Commend us to 
such killing. " What is sauce for the goose, may be for the" 

Secretary ; but it don't follow, that what is hod for the 

freeman, would be bad for the slave. Would it be good for the 
freeman of America to be sent to Algiers ? We say it would 
not hurt the slave to be sent there. He would rejoice to get 
there, and we should rejoice to have him, if we can't free him 
here, — even to Liberia — rather than stay within influence of such 
teachers of humanity as McDufiie and Gurley. 

The Secretary's mention of our proposal to colonize the slaves 
in Canada, as a serious proposal, is so roguishly " specious," that 



ECLIPSE OF THE SUN. 25 

we can't answer it. — The charge of " insanity," abolitionists are 
used to. The Secretary will be glad to be so, by and by, when 
we get slavery down in this country. The cry from the West 
Indies makes him look wild. He will exclaim, by another year 
or two, when Congress, with old John Quincy Adams at their 
head, and Alvan Stewart and Wendell Phillips and Vermont 
Knapp to back him up, declare slavery down in the capital and 
the district — he will then cry out, as Athaliah did, when she 
" heard the noise of the guard, the clapping of hands, and the 
God save king Joash." He will be stark crazy then, — if he does 
not repent — which we hope he may. 



ECLIPSE OF THE SUN. 

tFrom the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 22, 1838.] 

We had a fine opportunity, on our way fi-om Plymouth to Con- 
cord, to witness this grand conjunction of the mighty orbs of the 
sky — this conflict of the " greater and lesser lights" — the lesser 
obscuring the greater, as is sometimes the case among .sM^lunary 
bodies, by force of position. The glorious sun was indeed " sick 
almost to doomsday," — and it was pitiful to see his regal distress, 
and with what dignity and decency he drew around him his robe 
of clouds, to hide his disaster and shame from the smoked-glass 
gaze of mortals. The atmosphere and the landscape sombered at 
his obscuration, and he looked, as the foul intrusion overshadowed 
his disk, like a noble nature seized upon, darkened, marred and 
smothered to blackness and darkness, by the Genius of slavery. 
The envious eclipse passes off, and the released luminary shines 
on gloriously again in mid heaven. Slavery is perpetual eclipse — 
sickness to " doomsday" — eternal obscuration. May God in his 
mercy rectify the erring orbs of life, to prevent and remove such 
fatal moral conjunctions. 

All animate creation seemed to apprehend and notice instinc- 
tively the malady of the heavens. The few birds that remain 
extant at this unmusical season, gave token of their apprehension 
3 



26 ECLIPSE OF THE SUN. 



of night-fall by betaking themselves to the topmost boughs of the 
trees — to get as late a good-night as they could, from the blessed 
luminary whose good morrow they hail with such choral glad- 
ness, in that joyous season when " the time of the singing of 
birds is come." The cricket and the grasshopper, in the fields 
by the road side, set up, as night came down, their twilight hum, 
and blew their " drowsy bugle." A drove of cattle, through 
which we passed, on the way to Brighton — like a coffle from the 
city of Washington to Alabama — halted, as the drover told us, 
as if the hour for putting up for night had come. And our own 
good steed, refreshed by the coolness of the temperature, and 
warned by the deepening shadows, set up his evening trot, in 
full remembrance, as well as his master, of Concord hospitality — 
for he has a " memory like a horse" — and had every visible and 
ostensible reason to believe, that stable-time and release from the 
harness were at hand. Would that the poor human cattle of 
the republic could realize such a season ! But neither night nor 
eclipse brmgs respite to them. They are slaves. 

At the height of the obscuration, the sky wore the appearance 
of real sunset — a sunset far up from the horizon, with blue sky 
below, between it and the hills. The passing off of the eclipse 
was invisil le, by reason of the thick, hard, night-looking clouds, 
and the sun did not reappear to give assurance of his recovery. 
May it not be emblematic of the extinction of slavery in this 
country amid the gloomy shadowings and night of insurrection, 
which our friend, the Observer, deprecates with such deep shud- 
dering — while the pro.^pect of eternal slavery he can look on 
with most serene comprsure. 

The " specious" twiliglit of the eclipse gradually put on even- 
ing's bona fide enshroudings, and settled into but we forget 

that our eclipse was seen by all our readers, and will leave them, 
with the wish, that the sun may rise upon them again on the 
morrow, all unmarred and unscathed by his conflict with the 
"dirty planet," and light them all on the way to a day of anti- 
slavery gratitude and duty. 



BALLOOxN ASCENSION. 27 

BALLOON ASCENSION. 
[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 29, 1838.] 

One of these presumptuous " quittings of one's sphere," to 
" rush into the skies," was attempted in our little capital city, on 
Friday, the 21st inst., and with very handsome success. Popular 
curiosity poured in to witness it, under umbrellas and cloaks, from 
all the surrounding country. — We wish they would take half the 
pains to free their country from slavery, that they will to see a 
great soap-bubble go up into the air, with a gaseous man sub- 
joined to it. It was a novel sight, to be sure, and if it is to be 
done, perhaps it may as well be seen ; though going to see it, is all 
the occasion of the poor skyman's venturing up. He can have no 
other. — This aerostation can never, probably, come to any thing 
useful. We can't navigate, for the purposes of commerce, travel, 
or discovery, " the brave o'er-hanging firmament," or explore, in 
this gas-distended craft, the great orb of day, the waning moon, 
or those islands of light, that sprinkle at night the boundless 
Pacific " hung on high." — No rudder can be invented, that shall 
steer the light air-ship through the billowy clouds. The compass 
will not traverse, to point to the celestial pole, and no anchor 
can fix its crooked fluke in the bottom of the aeronaut's ocean. 

The utmost result of a voyage is the escape of the voyager 
with a whole neck. Science can derive no accessions fi-om it. 
It cannot promise even the north-west passage to China, to explore 
which, English audacity has braved the horrors of the polar half- 
year's night — the formidable ice-islands — and all the terrors of 
the arctic winter — a passage which commerce of course could 
not use, if they could find one, without a Parry or a Ross in 
every merchantman. 

Mr. Lauriat went up at Concord. His balloon, made of oiled 
silk, containing, as was said, seven hundred yards, and covered 
with a fine netting, was about two hours inflating. The gas was 
made in hogsheads, passed from them through tin tubes, going 
out of the tight headings, as the casks stood on end — and leading 
into reservoirs of lime water, which purified the gas as it passed 



28 BALLOON ASCENSION. 

through it, — out of which it was conducted, in large cloth ducts, 
into one which entered the throat of the balloon. The balloon 
when filled, was about sixty feet high and thirty through. As it 
filled and struggled to rise, like an overgrown elephant, it was 
held down by the cords attached to the netting, by a circle of 
spectators and others standing round it. The car was broutrht 
and suspended directly under the centre, by these cords. It was 
of basket work, about a foot high, and from four to five feet 
over; a net work connected a hoop with it about eighteen inches 
above, to keep the navigator from falling overboard. About 5 
o'clock, in the midst of a rain, he got on board his frail vessel, 
and they let him up, by a cord about twenty feet, when he made a 
short valedictory, cut his cable with his pocket knife, with rather 
an agitated hand, as we thought, and went up. 

The ascent was very graceful and gentle, and reminded us of 
the ascent of thistle-down. The multitude dismissed him with a 
good-natured hurrah — and he was soon so high that he looked 
more like a puppet than a man. He waved a little flag, which, if 
it was the starred and striped one we sometimes see flapping at 
liberty poles down here, could be more appropriately unfurled 
after he had passed beyond the clouds, than this side of them. 
When his vehicle was reduced to about the size of a hand, he 
went in behind a cloud-curtain, and disappeared. He went to 
Canterbury, about a dozen miles distant, and lighted down among 
the broad-brimmed hats of our friends the Shakers, about twenty 
minutes after he started, took a drop, as we are told, of their 
imperial cider, to keep the clouds from striking to his stomach, 
remounted and rode on, upon the twilight air, to Northfield, and 
landed near where Samuel Tilton, Esq. once arrested George 
Storrs for prayer. He was dripping wet, having rode in the raiu 
and among the very springs of foul weather, most of his way — 
though a portion of his journey was, we understand, above them 
in clear sky. When he was above the clouds, he said it seemed 
to him he was stationary, though he knew he must be moving. 
he knew not whither, with great velocity. He could not see the 
earth. His greatest elevation was eleven thousand feet. 

One of the greatest balloon feats we believe ever performed. 



GEORGE THOMPSON. 29 

was by a Mr. Blanchard and another adventurer, who sailed from 
Dover cliffs in England, crossed the entire British channel, and 
landed safely in France. It would have been much safer, how- 
ever, and quite as rational, to take the Calais packet. The chief 
end and result of ballooning seem to be, as in the case of the 
intrepid Samuel Patch, (who ascended the other way,) to show 
that " some things can be done as well as others." 



GEORGE THOMPSON. 
[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 29, 1838.] 

Our readers may remember that his excellency Governor Hill, 
the Reverend Wilbur Fisk, D. D., President of Wesleyan Uni- 
versity, the Honorable Charles G. Atherton, one of our free and 
enlightened delegation in Congress, and sundry other dignitaries 
in church and state, as well as the Honorable their Graces the 
Concord mob — while Mr. Thompson was in this country, and 
soon after our brutality drove him from these guilty shores, — took 
great liberties with his name, and attempted liberties with his 
person. We call the attention of these distinguished function- 
aries to some of their sayings and doings, and will then subjoin 
some few of the testimonials recently come to us from England, 
or which will be new to them, we presume, as they would not be 
likely to encounter them in the course of their more lofty readings, 

" This fugitive from justice," said his excellency Isaac Hill — 
this " bankrupt in character and in purse," said his highness the 
Reverend Doctor Fisk, a gratuitous vindicator of slavery — " a 
miscreant who had fled from the indignation of an outraged 
people," declaimed the pert Mister Atherton — amen to the whole 
of it, repeated their Graces the mob. 

Hear Thomas Fowell Buxton, the Wilberforce of the British 
parliament — one of the ornaments of philanthropy for all Chris- 
tendom. It was at a great anti-slavery meeting in the city of 
Norwich, in the neighborhood of where this fugitive from justice 
had been brought up. He had just spoken on the platform wheio 
3* 



30 GEORGE THOMPSON. 

Buxton and other great men of England sat. " I come here," 
says Thomas Fowell Buxton, " to declare my assent to the great 
doctrine of immediate abolition of the apprenticeship, as well as 
to hear a speech from George Thompson, with whose sentiments 
I fully concur, and with whom I hope to labor through years to 
come, shoulder to shoulder, for the abolition of slavery and the 
slave trade' throughout the world.." " Fugitive from justice" in- 
deed — " bankrupt in character," with a witness ! 

Hear Ralph Wardlaw, of Glasgow, one of the ablest, pro- 
foundest divines and writers in Europe. After Mr. Thompson's 
victory in Scotland over Rev. Robert J. Breckenridge of Balti- 
more, who honored the challenge of this " fugitive from justice" 
in the very land from which he fled, — fought with him in presence 
of 1200 of the very flower of the city of Glasgow, and fell before 
him there — at a public meeting held in Dr. Heugh's chapel in 
commemoration of thig victory. Dr. Wardlaw said of Mr. Thomp- 
son, " With the ability, the zeal, the eloquence, the energy, the 
steadfastness of principle, the exhaustless and indefatigable per- 
severance of OUR CHAMPION, we Were more than satisfied." — 
" We sent him to America," said Dr. Wardlaw. " He went 
with the best wishes of the benevolent, and the fervent prayers 
of the pious. He remained in the faithful, laborious and perilous 
execution of the commission entrusted to him, as long as it could 
be done without the actual sacrifice of life. He returned. We 
hailed his arrival," &.c. " Fugitive from justice," says the New 
Hampshire governor. " We sent him," says Dr. Wardlaw. 
" Bankrupt in character," says the Rev. Dr. Fisk. " He return- 
ed," says Dr. Wardlaw, " and we hailed his arrival." 

And now hear Henry Brougham, in the House of Lords. We 
put him against the American Brougham, who called George 
Thompson " miscreant !" against the Honorable Charles G. Ath- 
ii-ton, of America. In the House of Lords, July 16th ultimo, in 
reply to Lord Glenelg, who claimed for the British government 
the credit of abolishing slavery in the West India islands — Lord 
Brougham said that " he maintained that, but for the interference 
of this country by the friends of emancipation and of liberty, 
there would not to-day have been received such a despatch as 



DR. WAYLAND. 31 



had arrived from the governor of Jamaica." " He would say, 
' Honor to those to whom honor was due.' He would name such 
men as Joseph Sturge, John Scoble, William Allen, and other 
noble-minded and devoted philanthropists — and above all he 
would name one — one of the most eloquent men he had ever 
heard either in or out of parliament — he meant the gallant and 
highly-gifted George Thompson, who had not alone exerted him- 
self in the cause of humanity in this country, but had risked his 
life in America, in the promulgation of those doctrines, which he 
knew to be founded in truth." 

Has our dainty-fingered little statesman ever heard of Henry 
Brougham, of England — that intellectual Titan — that combina- 
tion of all that is glorious in the history of British genius and 
learning and eloquence and patriotism ; the pride of Westminster 
hall, the peerless among her peerage, the very star of England, 
the man whose impress, of all others, this age and coining ages 
will bear wherever the English language shall be spoken, the 
man whose mental influence is felt from the palace to the hovel, 
from the queen to the chimney-sweeper — has the Honorable Mr. 
Atherton heard of him, and does he call " miscreant" the man 
who receives such eulogium from his lips, in the face of Europe ? 
Fugitive from justice ! Is the companion of Brougham and 
O'Connell and Buxton and Sturge and Scoble and Allen and 
Wardlaw, a " felon" and a " bankrupt in reputation" in England 
— a miscreant? What say you, Messrs. Hill, Fisk, Atherton, 
and mob, will you repeat your words in face of such testi- 
monials as these ? 



UMITATIONS OF HUMAN RESPONSIBILITIES.— 
DR. WAYLAND. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Oct. 6, 1838.] 

We were unpleasantly surprised, on receiving our last number 
of the " Comprehensive Commentary" and the " Supplement," 
from our good anti-slavery friend Boutelle, to find the unfeeling 



32 LIMITATIONS O F RESPONSIBILITIES. 

author of the " limitations" posted up, in the frontispiece, by Dr. 
Jenks, at his own right hand, and directly over the head of old 
President Dwight. Perhaps this is a sort of peace-offering to 
the slaveholder — a bit of policy to give the " Commentary" a 
currency among our " southern brethren." The Doctor's image 
would give the Commentary a cordial passport to the heart of 
every slaveholder. He would expect to find the Bible itself 
chock full of limitations of human obligations and warrant for 
slaveholding. 

We should not dare send a lad to the Doctor's college, for fear 
he would teach him this science of " limitations ;" a science as 
fatal to human welfare as the atmosphere of Upas is to healthful 
respiration. What a kindly blow has the Rev. Doctor here struck 
at religion and humanity, by this work, with a most significant 
and appropriate title — " Limitations of Responsibilities !" Abridg- 
ment of human obligations ! Curtailment of moral obligations ! 
Irresponsibilities to God and man ! What a title and a work, to 
surprise and delight the devil withal ! Give me, quoth the devil, 
these abridgers of human liability. O no, sweet mortals, " ye 
shall not surely die." Hath God indeed said so and so? It may 
be — but then the meaning hath excellent " limitations." Com- 
mend me, quoth the arch-gambler for the exposed soul, to these 
highly taught rabbles — brought up at foot of Gamaliel, who will 
ratiocinate the apprehensive mind clear of the trammels of re- 
sponsibility. 

It has been a desideratum with human depravity, from the first 
transgression down, to discover that this fatal responsibility had 
limits — some resting place, short of these crucifying require- 
ments. Orthodoxy itself hath at last discovered it, and the for- 
tunate finder is Doctor Francis Wayland. 

"Granting slavery to be in violation of the law of God," says 
the daring Doctor, " it still remains to be decided, what is our 
duty respecting it." In this horrible doctrine we cannot agree, 
but say rather, that granting slavery, or any thing else, to be in vio- 
lation of that law, it is decided, and always has been, that our duty 
is forthwith to labor to our utmost for its immediate suppression. 

The Doctor's essay is to " kill the abclitionists dead." Colonel 



DR. WAYLAND. 33 



Mordecai Noah, of the tribe of Issachar, says exultingly, that it 
is doing it. A band of self-devoted men and women have formed 
themselves together, to deliver, by the power of simple truth, 
their poor, soul-withered brethren from a condition that would 
awaken irrepressible pity in any thing but an under mill-stone. 
They are succeeding. They have insured success ; and this 
northern Doctor has volunteered, as a sort of Swiss guard, to 
protect the slaveholder against them in his " paramount rights," 
and to " kill" these unoffending and faithful ones " dead." He 
has woven a web of sophistry, which it would waste time, and no 
doubt puzzle our unmetaphysical brains to unravel, in the cun- 
ning order in which it is put together. We shall not worry our- 
selves to thread its labyrinths, or unglue its spider fastenings. 
In plain housewife style, we take the broomstick of " self-evi- 
dent fruth," and just poke down this cobweb — dead flies and all, 
warp and filling, — with the sly old weaver himself, where he sits 
in his central woof, " cunning and fierce, mixture abhorred." 
For see. — Slaveholding is a self-evident crime. We (Doctor and 
all) are palpably at the bottom of it. It is engendered and fed 
on our own vicious public sentiment. We are bound forthwith 
to correct this sentiment, and thereby abolish slavery. There is 
no " limitation" about it, and no " two ways about it," in the 
expressive parlance. This is better made out, in the statement, 
than by any help of words with which we are acquainted, — and 
we here dispose of the whole Doctor. 

" No cat has two tails," quoth the Doctor. Agreed, says 
Major Noah, and his gentile brother, the New Hampshire Patriot. 
" But every cat has one tail more than no cat," adds the Doctor. 
" Han't she 1" cries Major Noah. " I want to know if she han't," 
echoes the New Hampshire Patriot. " Therefore," concludes 
the Doctor, (and anti-slavery is extinguished) — " therefore every 
cat has three tails." " Three tails !" exults the epauletted Is- 
raelite ; " three tails, by our gold-laced gabardine, every cat is a 
three-tailed bashaw," and it is " perfectly conclusive to the mind" 
of the New Hampshire Patriot. Now we hold up any bona fide 
pussy in the land by the tail, and all eyes may see that she hath 
but one. The Doctor cannot argue it into three^ 



34 JAUNT TO VERMONT. 



JAUNT TO VERMONT. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Oct. 20, 1838.] 

We have recently journeyed through a portion of this free 
state, and it is not all imagination in us, that sees, in its bold 
scenery, — its uninfected, inland position, its mountainous, but 
fertile and verdant surface, the secret of the noble and anti- 
slavery predisposition of its people. They are located for free- 
dom. Liberty's home is on their Green Mountains. Their farm- 
er-republic no where touches the ocean — " the highway of the" 
world's crimes, as well as its " nations." It has no seaport for 
the importntion of slavery, or the exportation of its own highland 
republicanism. Vermont is accordingly the earliest anti-slavery 
state, and should slavery ever prevail over this nation to its utter 
subjugation, the last, lingering footsteps of retiring liberty will 
be seen — not, as Daniel Webster said, in the proud old common- 
wealth of Massachusetts, about Bunker hill and Faneuil hall, 
(places long since deserted of freedom) — but wailing, like Jeph- 
tha's daughter, among the " hollows," and along the sides of the 
Green Mountains. 

Vermont shows gloriously at this autumn season. Frost has 
gently laid hands on her exuberant vegetation, tinging her rock- 
niapie woods, without abating the deep verdure of her herbage. 
Every where along her peopled hollows and her bold hill-slopes 
and summits is alive with green, while her endless hard-tvood 
forests are uniformed with all the hues of early fall — richer than 
the regimentals of the kings that glittered in the train of Napo- 
leon on the confines of Poland, when he lingered there on the 
last outposts of summer, before plunging into the snow-drifts of 
the North — more gorgeous than the " array" of Saladin's life- 
guard in the wars of the Crusaders — or of " Solomon in all 
his glory" — decked in all colors and hues, but still the hues of 
life. Vegetution touched, but not dead, or if killed, not bereft 
yet of " signs of li e." " Decay's effacing fingers" had not yet 
" swept the ' hills,' where beauty lingers." All looked fresh as 
growing foliage. Vermont frosts don't seem to be " killing frosts.* 



JAUNT TO VERMONT. 35 

They only change aspects of beauty. The mountain pastures, 
verdant to the peaks, and over the peaks of tlie high, steep hills, 
were covered with the amplest feed, and clothed with countless 
sheep ; — the hay-fields heavy with second crop, in some partly cut 
and abandoned, as if in very weariness and satiety, blooming with 
honey-suckle, contrasting strangely with the colors on the woods — 
the fat cattle and the long-tailed colts and close-built Morgans wal- 
lowing in it, up to the eyes, or the cattle down to rest, with full 
bellies, by ten in the morning. Fine but narrow roads wound along 
among the hills — free, almost entirely, of stone, and so smooth as 
to be safe for the most rapid driving — made of their rich, dark, pow- 
der-looking soil. Beautiful villages or scattered settlements break- 
ing upon the delighted view, on the meandering way, making the 
ride a continued scene of excitement and animation. The air 
fresh, free and wholesome, — no steaming of the fever and ague of 
the West, or the rank slaveholding of the South, — the road almost 
dead level for miles and miles among mountains that lay over the 
land like the great swells of the sea, and looking, in the pros- 
pect, as though there could be no passage. On the whole, we 
never, in our limited travel, experienced any thing like it, and 
we commend any one, given to despondency or dumps, to a ride, 
in beginning of October, chaise-top back, fleet horses tandem, 
fresh from the generous fodder and thorough-gc iiig groomage 
of Steel's tavern, a forenoon ride, from White-river Sharon, 
through Tunbridge, to Chelsea Hollow. There's nothing on 
Salem turnpike like the road, and nothing, any where, a match 
for "the lay of the land" and the ever-varying, animating land- 
scape. 

We can't praise Vermonters for their fences or their barns, 
and it seems to us their out-houses and door-yards hardly corre- 
spond with the well-built dwellings. But they have no stones for 
wall — no red oak or granite for posts, or pine growth for rails 
and boards in their hard-wood forests, and we queried, as we 
observed their " insufficient fences" and lack of pounds, whether 
such barriers as our side of the Connecticut we have to rear 
about an occasional patch of feed, could be necessary in a coun- 
try where no " creatures" appeared to run in the road, and where 



36 JAUNT TO VERMONT. 



there was not choice enough in field and pasture, to make it an 
object for any body to be breachy, or to stray — and where every 
hoof seemed to have its hands full at home. Poor fences there 
seemed to answer all purposes of good ones among us, where 
every blade of grass has to be watched and guarded from the 
furtive voracity of hungry New Hampshire stock. 

The farmers looked easy and care-free. We saw none that 
seemed back-broken with hard work, or brow-wrinkled with fear 
of coming to want. How do your crops come in, sir ? " O, 
middlin'." — How much wheat? "Well, about three hundred. 
Wheat han't filled well." — How much hay do you cut? " Well, 
sir, from eighty to one hundred ton." Corn? "Over four hun- 
dred; corn is good." How many potatoes? "Well, I don't 
know; we've dug from eight hundred to one thousand." How 
many cattle do you keep ? ' ' Only thirty odd head this year ; 
cattle are scarce." Sheep? " Three hundred and odd." Horse 
kind? " Five," and so on. And yet the Vermont farmers are 
leaving for the West. 

The only thing we saw, that looked anti-republican, was their 
magnificent State House, which gleams among their hills more 
like some ancient Greek temple, than the agency house of a self- 
governed democracy. It is a very imposing object. Of the 
severest and most compact proportions, its form and material (the 
solid granite) comporting capitally with the surrounding scenery. 
About one hundred and fifty feet long, and some eighty or one 
hundred wide, we should judge, an oblong square, with a central 
projection in front, the roof of it supported on a magnificent row 
of granite pillars — the top a dome without spire. It looks as if 
it had been translated fi-om old Thebes or Athens, and planted 
down among Ethan Allen's Green Mountains. It stands on a 
ledge of rock ; close behind it a hill, somewhat rocky and rug- 
ged for Vermont ; and before it, descends an exceedingly fine 
and extensive yard, fenced with granite and iron in good keeping 
with the building, the ground covered with the richest verdure, 
broken into wide walks, and planted with young trees. It is a 
very costly structure ; but Vermont can afford it, though we hold 
to cheap and very plain State houses, inasmuch as the seat of 



JAUiNT TO VERMOiNT. 37 

goverhment with us is, or should be, at the people's homes. We 
want to see the dwelling-houses of the " owners of the soil," the 
palaces of the country. There the sovereignty of the country 
should hold its court, and there its wealth should be expended. 
Let despots and slaveholders build their pompous public piles 
and their pyramids of Egypt. 

The apartments and furniture of the State House within are 
very rich, and, we should judge, highly comjjiodious. The 
Representatives' Hall a semicircular, with cushioned seats, a 
luxury hardly suited to the humor of the stout old Aliens and 
Warners of early times, and comporting but slightly with the 
hardy habits of the Green Mountain boys, who now come there, 
and in brief session pass anti-slavery resolutions, to the dismay 
of the haughty South, and the shame of the neighboring dougln- 
faced North. 

Their legislature was about to sit — and an anti-slavery friend, 
one of their state officers, informed us that Alvan Stewart was 
expected there, to attend their anti-slavery anniversary. We 
should have rejoiced to stay and hear him handle southern slavery 
in that Vermont State House. — We trust yet to hear George 
Thompson there. It shall be our voice, when he comes again, 
that he go directly into Vermont ; that he land there from Can- 
ada. Let him leave England in some man-ot-war, that lioists the 
" meteor flag," and mounts guns only in chase of the slave ship, 
and enter the continent by way of the gulf of St. Lawrence. 
Let him tarry some months among the farmers of Vermont, and 
tell them the whole mysteries of slavery, and infuse into their 
yeoman-hearts his own burning abhorrence of it, till they shall 
loathe slaveholding as they loathe the most dastardly thieving, 
and with one stern voice, from the Connecticut to Champlain, 
demand its annihilation. We would have him go into the upland 
farming towns — not to the shores of the lake, where the steam- 
boat touches, to land the plague of pro-slavery — nor to the capi- 
tal, where " property and standing" might turn up the nose at 
the negro's equal humanity, or the vassals of " the northern man 
with southern principles" veto the anti-slavery meeting with a 
drunken mob — but to Randolph Hill, to Danville Green, the 
4 



38 JAUNT TO VERMONT. 

swells of Peacham, and the plains of St. Johnsbury, to Strafford 
Hollow and the vales of Tunbridge and Sharon — William Slade's 
Middlebury, and up among James Bell's Caledonia hills. Let 
the South learn that George Thompson was stirring the Ver- 
MONTERS UP AMONG THE Green MOUNTAINS. See if Alabama 
would send a requisition for him to anti-slavery Governor Jen- 
nison, or anti-slavery Lieut. Gov. Camp. And what response, 
think ye, she would get back? — a Gilchrist report — or the thun- 
dering judgment rather of stout old Justice Harrington to the 
shivering slave-chaser — " Snow me your bill op sale of this 
man from the Almighty !" A decision," said a judge of the 
present truly upright and learned bench of that state, " no less hon- 
orable to Judge Harrington's head than his heart, and good law\" 

Let George Thompson land in Vermont, and stay there, till 
other states shall learn the courage to guaranty him his right? 
within their own borders, if they have not learned it already for 
shame. He can do anti-slavery's work, and all of it, in Ver- 
mont. He need go no farther south. They can hear him dis- 
tinctly, every word he says, from Randolph Green clear down to 
Texas. John C. Calhoun would catch every blast of his bugle ; 
and assassin Preston startle at its note, in the rotunda at Charles- 
ton. And by and by, when every Vermont farmer shall have 
heard his voice, and shaken his hand and welcomed him to his 
hearth-stone, let him come down into Montpelier and shake that 
granite State House ; and mayhap to fair Burlington, to that Uni- 
versity — where the colored student can now enjoy, unrestricted, 
all the equal privileges of '■"■field recitation ;" where he may 
come, under cloud of night, to gaze at the stars on the very same 
common with the young New-Yorker, and the son of the rich 
merchant of this fair city of the lake, or accompany them, in 
broad day, on an excursion of trigonometry, in the open fields. 
The doors of that college chapel would open wide to George 
Thompson, after the Green Mountain boys had once heard him 
speak. 

But we are lingering too long for our readers or ourselves, 
in this noble state. We hasten back to our own native, sturdy 
quarry of rocks and party politicsi 



DR. FRANCIS WAYLAND. 39 

DR. FRANCIS WAYLAND. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Oct. 20, 1838.] 

We wonder if this learned divine has ever undertaken to con- 
vince men that their "responsibilities were limited" in regard 
to the removal of any other nuisance than slavery. We have 
not seen any portion of his "limitations," except that relating to 
slavery. Whether he has treated on them as to any other sin, 
we do not know. But what possessed him to think men needed 
reminding of the limitations of their obligations'? Are they 
prone to works of supererogation ? Are they apt to be rampant 
in the exercise of that " charity," which " seeketh not her own," 
to transcend the bounds of their duty 1 Is it necessary, in order 
to a proper husbanding of their sympathies, that they be warned 
and admonished against their too prodigal lavishment upon their 
fellow-men ? Is it to be predicated of fallen, depraved men, that 
they will be likely to overrun their obligations ? Need they be 
guarded against an extravagance like this? Need ministers of 
the gospel tax their ingenuity in a behalf like this? Generally 
this class of men have been engaged, on what they call in court 
" the other side ;" in enforcing human obligations, and in setting 
forth and urging on men's consciences their terrible responsibili- 
ties — to remove from their minds and hearts erroneous notions 
of their limitations, and of their own freedom from obligation. 

We take it nothing can be clearer and more reasonable than 
the universal obligation to do to others as we would that they 
should do to us — and to do likewise for others. If we were 
slaves, does any doctor doubt we should desire our neighbors, if 
we had any, to try to rescue us ? If our house was a-fire, should 
not we want our neighbors to help put the fire out? If we were 
in the water, going to the bottom, could we bear it that neighbors 
should go indifferently by, and let us sink — that they should 
merely pity us — in the abstract? The slavery case is exceed- 
ingly plain. Slavery is the creature of tolerance — of public 
sufferance. Southern slavery exists in northern sufferance. The 
North is the seat of American sufferance. It is the theatre of 



40 DR. FRANCIS WAYLAND. 

moral influence for this nation. There is no such influence io 
the South — that is, no reforming influence except by negative 
operation. What is the moral influence of New Orleans on the 
nation ? What of Charleston, or Mobile, or St. Louis, or Rich- 
mond, or any of the states or people of which these are the capi- 
tals? What religious or moral enterprise ever originated, or 
advanced in any of these places or people 1 They no more influ- 
ence the country, than gamblers, drunkards, thieves, religiously 
influence the church. The church influences them for good or 
for evil, according to lier faithfulness or unfaithfulness in her 
Master's service. The North influences the South in the matter 
of slavery. Yea, the North acts with the South in slaveholding. 
They directly and professedly uphold the system wherever they 
have occasion. They tolerate it in the District of Columbia. 
They directly sustain it in the territories. They allow the slave 
trade between the states. They conspired with the South in the 
constitution, that the foreign trade in slaves should not be inter- 
rupted by Congress for twenty years. They voted that Arkansas 
should come into the Union, with a constitution guarding slavery 
with a two-edged sword, giving the slaveholder a veto upon an 
emancipating legislature, and the legislature a check upon the 
repentant slaveholder. They have voted to admit a system that 
forbids and discourages repentance of the sin of slaveholding, 
and makes it desperate. All this has been done solemnly and 
with deliberation, and in legislative form — and the whole nation 
has tacitly allowed those of its people who chose, to hold slaves. 
It has never been disreputable, but highly the contrary, to hold 
slaves in this country. Is not a nation answerable for the vices 
and crimes which are reputable and popular within its borders? 
If a nation has any moral influence, any moral standard, is it not 
responsible for what that standard does not condemn ? Has not 
this nation cast all its presidential votes for two men, guilty at 
the very moment of the election and all their days before and 
since, of the crime of slaveholding — Andrew Jackson, a slave- 
holder and a slave driver, and voted for twice by a majority of 
the electoral suffrage of this nation, north and south — and Henry 
Clay, a slaveholder and a notorious compromiser in the service 



DR. FRANCIS WAYLAND. 41 

of the infernal system, voted for by the rest of the nation. Jack- 
son chosen by northern men agaiiiit Adams a northern man. And 
then a northern man abandoned by northern men, one and the 
same party, in favor of Clay, a southern slaveholder 

We have nothing to do with abolishing slavery, says the Doc- 
tor Wayland, either as citizens of the United States, or as men. 
Our responsibilities for its removal are all limited away. On 
the very face of our case, it is palpable and grossly evident, we 
say, that the northern people have at least as much to do with its 
abolition as the people of the south. They have at least as much 
to do with its continuation. They are as directly engaged in it. 
They have the control of it in the national councils wherever it 
exists within congressional jurisdiction. It is the North, and not 
the South, that prevents a legislative abolition of it in the District 
of Columbia. Slavery in the national district is a northern insti- 
tution, and not a southern. It is the " peculiar institution" there 
of the North, and not of the South. Is it not so? We declare 
then, that, as citizens and as men, we at the North have some- 
thing to do with the abolition of American slavery — ay, that we 
have every thing to do with it. We can abolish it, and we alone 
can. We ought to abolish it, and we alone ought to do it, as 
appears at first impartial glance. 

" I think it evident," says Dr. Wayland, " that as citizens of 
the United States, we have no power whatever either to abolish 
slavery in the southern states, or to do any thing of which the 
direct intention is to abolish it." We do npt perceive the pro- 
priety of the Doctor's language when he talks of a thing having 
an intention. Slaves have intentions, and the Doctor and his 
friends call them things — but how a thing to be done can have an 
intention — a " direct intention," as the Doctor says, is beyond 
our slight learning. Perhaps the Doctor meant tcndciicy by in- 
tention — and meant to say that we could not do any thing the 
direct tendency of which is the abolition of southern slavery. 
That is to say, we, as citizens of the United States, may not vote 
in Congress against slaveholding in the District of Columbia, or 
in the territories, or against the slave trade between the states. 
We may not receive petitions in behalf of those objects — we 
4* 



42 DR. FRANCIS WAYLAND. 

may not petition Congress — we may not talk against slavehold- 
ino- — or write against it — or pray against it — or sympathize with 
our fellow-men in slavery ; because each and every one of these 
acts has a direct tendency to abolish slavery in the southern states. 
Slavery in the land is a system, a whole system, a custom, a 
crime, and but one crime wherever committed. It is not war- 
rantable in one place, and not in another. It is not lawful in one 
state, and not in another. It is one entire, individual, undivided 
matter of fact every where in the land, as much as murder is — 
and if it is denounced and condemned in the District of Colum- 
bia by Congress, it is as fatal to it, in the whole country, as if 
denounced in South Carolina by Congress, or any where else — 
more fatal to it. A blow struck against it, as existing in that 
district, would be a blow at the head of it, and it would be mor- 
tal, — not one having a direct tcndcnnj to kill the system — or a 
direct intention, as the Doctor hath it, — but a blow destructive 
in itself It would fix the brand of infomy on every slaveholder's 
front throughout the nation. It would render him infamous even 
in the eyes of Americans. Dr. Wayland could set no limits to 
his infamy. It would seal him a criminal with the broad seal 
of the nation, the E phiriJms unnm. Who would vote for him 
for President then — who would send him ambassndor to Lon- 
don — who put him in Speaker of the House — President of the 
Senate — Chief Justice of the United States ? Who would shake 
hands with him at the capitol ? Now he is first in office, first 
in honor. Slaveholding is passport to every distinction. We 
ask Dr. Wayland and his aid-de-camp Major Mordccai Noachus, 
if a vote by Congress on our petitions, abolishing slavery in 
the district, and making it capital to enslave a man there, as 
they would do if they made it penal at all, would not give the 
system the death blow in the South, even if abolitionists had 
done nothing to kill it elsewhere. Would not that single 
enactment do it? Self-evidently it would. Have we not a right, 
as citizens of the United States, to do this? The Doctor says no. 
We say, ay. 

But not to follow this self-immolated man any farther now, we 
will say that we need not get a vote from Congress against slavery 



DR. FRANCIS WAYLAND. 4;j. 

in order to its abolition there and every where. Congress ! what 
is it? The mere dregs and precipitations, the settlings and sedi- 
ments of the nation. It is as soulless as a corporation. It has 
no soul, no mind, no principle, no opinion. It is an echo, and 
that not always a true one. It is a mere catastrophe — an upshot. 
It will only mutter the word abolition, after it has become an old 
story through the country. We have struck slavery its death 
blow already. We need not contend with the Doctor about the 
power. " One thing you have done," said an eminent judge to 
us, " you have driven the South to come out and declare directlv 
in favor of slavery. Heretofore they have pretended to lament 
it, as an evil. Now they declare it is a blessing, and a righteous 
institution." Have we not, said we, driven them to join the 
issue, before the world, in favor of slaveholding? " You have," 
said the judge. Must they not maintain it before the world, said 
we, to save the institution from going down ? " They must," he 
replied. Can they maintain it? said we. " No," said he, — and 
yet the judge is not an abolitionist. 

We need not contend v/ith this Wayland and wayward Presi- 
dent for the power, as citizens or as men, to beat down southern 
slaveholding. We have exercised the poiccr already, and the 
South knows it. We have waked the nation to discuss the de- 
merits of the system and the question of the negro man's hu- 
manity ; and they are discussing it, and amid the flash and fervor 
of the agitation the foul system dies. It can no more endure it, 
than owls can noon, or bats sunshine, or ghosts day-break. While 
Wayland is groping about in his metaphysics to get hold of some 
puzzle to embarrass us about the power, we will have exercised it 
to the full, and cleared the land of slavery. Then where will 
the Doctor find a market for his "limitations?" Slavery is a 
dead man already, unless Orator Rhett, and Professor Dew, 
and Colonel McDuffie, and General Hamilton, and doctor this, 
that and the other one, can maintain the precious creature in 
the argument, and get the verdict of an enlightened and purged 
Christianity in its favor. To this conclusion it has already come. 
The question is stated — the issue joined— the pleadings closed — 
all demurring and abating and delaying past by. And now for 



44 COLOR-PHOBIA. 



the trial. Now, Slavery, hold thine own. The Doctor's ques- 
tion of our having the power comes too late. 



COLOR-PHOBIA. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Nov. 10, 1838.] 

Our people have got it. They have got it in the blue, col- 
lapse stage. Many of them have got it so bad, they can't get 
well. They will die of it. It will be a mercy, if the nation 
does not. What a dignified, philosophic malady! Dread of 
complexion. They don't know they have got it — or think, rather, 
they took it the natural way. But they were inoculated. It was 
injected into their veins and incidcd into their systems, by old 
Doctor Slavery, the great doctor that the famous Dr. Wayland 
studied with. There is a kind of varioloid type, called coloniza- 
tion. They generally go together, or all that have one are more 
apt to catch the other. Inoculate for one, (no matter which,) 
and they will have both, before they get over it. The remedy 
and the preventive, if taken early, is a kine-pock sort of matter, 
by the name of anti-slavtry. It is a safe preventive and a cer- 
tain cure. None that have it, genuine, ever catch slavery or 
colonization or the color-phobia. You can't inoculate either into 
them. It somehow changes and redeems the constitution, so that 
it is unsusceptible of them. An abolitionist can sleep safely all 
night in a close room, Avhere there has been a colonization meet- 
ing the day before. He might sleep with R. R. Gurley and old 
Dr. Proudfit, three in a bed, and not catch it. The remedy was 
discovered by Dr. William Lloyd Jenner-Garrison. 

This color-phobia is making terrible havoc among our com- 
munities. Anti-slavery drives it out, and after a while cures it. 
But it is a base, low, vulgar ailment. It is meaner, in fact, than 
the itch. It is worse to get rid of than the " seven years' itch." 
It is fouler than Old Testament leprosy. It seems to set the 
dragon into a man, and make him treat poor, dark-skinned folks 
like a tiger. It goes hardest with dark-complect white people. 



COLOR-PHOBIA. 45 



They have it longer and harder than light-skinned people. It 
makes them sing out " Nigger — nigger," sometimes in their sleep. 
Sometimes they make a noise like this, " Darkey — darkey — 
darkey." Sometimes, " Wully — wully — wully." They will turn 
up their noses, when they see colored people, especially if they 
are of a pretty rank, savory habit of person, themselves. They 
are generally apt to turn up their noses, as though there was 
some " bad smell" in the neighborhood, when they have it bad, 
and are naturally pretty odoriferous. It is a tasty disorder — a 
beautiful ailment ; very genteel, and apt to go in " first families." 
We should like to have Hogarth take a sketch of a community 
that had it — of ours, for instance, when the St. Vitus' fit was on. 
We have read somewhere of a pninter, who made so droll a pic- 
ture, that he died a-laughing at the sight of it. Hogarth might 
not laugh at this picture. It would be a sight to cry at, rather 
than laugh, especially if he could see the pot)r objects of our 
frenzy, when the fit is on — which indeed is all the time, for it is 
an unintermittent. Our attitude would be most ridiculous and 
ludicrous, if it were not too mortifying and humiliating and cruel. 
Our Hogarth would be apt to die of something else than laugh- 
ter, at sight of his sketch. 

The courtly malady is the secret of all our anti-abolition, and 
all our mobocracy. It shuts up all the consecrated meeting- 
houses — and all the temples of justice, the court-houses, against 
the friends of negro liberty. It is all alive with fidgets about 
desecrating the Sabbath with anti-slavery lectures. It thinks 
anti-slavery pew-owners can't go into them, or use their pulpit, 
when it is empty, without leave of the minister whom they em- 
ploy to preach in it. It will forcibly shut people out of their 
own houses and off their own land, — not with the respectful vio- 
lence of enemies and trespassers, but the contemptuous uncere- 
moniousness of the plantation overseer — mingled moreover with 
the slavish irascibility of the poor negro, when he holds down 
his fellow-slave for a flogging. It sneers at human rights through 
the J'ree press. It handed John B. Mahon over to the alligators 
of Kentucky. It shot Elijah P. Lovejoy at Alton. It dragged 
away the free school, at Canaan. It set Pennsylvania Hall a-fire.* 



46 COLOR-PHOBIA. 



It broke Miss Crandall's school windows, and threw filth into her 
well. It stormed the female prayer meeting in Boston, with a 
" property and standing" forlorn hope. It passed the popish 
resolution at Littleton, in Grafton county. It shut up the meet- 
ing-house at Meredith Bridge, against minister and all, — and the 
homely court-house there, and howled like bedlam around the 
little, remote district school-house, and broke the windows at 
night. It excludes consideration and prayer in regard to the 
forlorn and christian-made heathenism of the American colored 
man, from county conferences and clerical associations. It 
broods over the mousings of the New York Observer, and gives 
keenness to the edge and point of its New Hampshire name-sake. 
It votes anti-slavery lectures out of the New Hampshire state 
house, and gives it public hearing on petitions, in a seven by 
nine committee room. It answers the most insulting mandate 
of southern governors, calling for violations of the state constitu- 
tion and bill of rights, by legislative report and resolves that the 
paramount rights of slavery are safe enough in New Hampshire, 
without these violations. It sneers and scowls at woman's speak- 
ing in company, unless to simper, when she is flattered by a fool of 
the masculine or neuter gender. It won't sign an anti-slavery 
petition, for fear it will put back emancipation half a century. It 
votes in favor of communing with slaveholders, and throwing the 
pulpit wide open to men-stealers, to keep peace in the churches, 
and prevent disunion. It will stifle and strangle sympathy for the 
slave and " remembrance of those in bonds," to prevent disturb- 
ance of religious revivals. It will sell the American slave to buy 
Bibles, or hire negro-hating and negro-buying missionaries for 
foreign heathen of all quarters but christian-wasted Africa. It pre- 
fers American lecturers on slavery, to having that foreign emissary, 
George Thompson, come over here, to interfere with American 
rights and prejudices. It abhors "• church action" and " med- 
dling with politics." In short, it abhors slavery in the abstract — 
wishes it might be done away, but denies the right of any body 
or any thing to devise its overthrow, but slavery itself and slave- 
holders. It prays for the poor slave, that he might be elevated, 
while it stands both feet on his breast to keep him down. It 



THE NEW HAMPSHIRE COURIER. 47 

prays God might open a way in his own time for the deliverance 
of the slave, while it stands, with arms akimbo, right across the 
way he has already opened. Time would fail us to tell of its 
extent and depth in this free country, or the deeds it has done. 
Anti-slavery must cure it, or it must die out like the incurable 
drunkards. 



THE NEW HAMPSHIRE COURIER. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of November 10, 1838.] 

The New Hampshire Courier has a correspondent, " Homo," 
out in defence of colonization and against anti-slavery. " Homo" 
is a man every inch of him, for coming out in black and white. 
Welcome, good Homo. And thanks to brother Courier (if nig- 
gers may be allowed the expression) for giving " Homo" place in 
his columns. It will take a Homo to maintain the ground — not 
against us, but against his own readers. But courage, good 
Homo! — on with your numbers. We have glanced over No. I, 
and seen the face of No. 2. Courage ! we say. You have no 
great of a task — not much of a stint — nothing more to encounter 
than humanity and divinity — and heaven and earth. Cheer, man, 
the odds are with you. 

Welcome, Homo, to the tented field. Abolitionists are tired 
of fighting intangible enemies. They glory to see one visible 
and tangible take the plain, and stretch his lines. They rejoice 
at the unfurling of flags and the glitter of the drawn blade. We 
will diligently and respectfully peruse " Homo," and if, by and 
by, we shall copy any thing unAomogeneous in his appeals to his 
countrymen, we will give it such essay as our people may. We 
rejoice that the great rights of humanity are at length being 
esteemed of sufficient dignity to be argued down. 



48 COLOiMZATION. 



COLONIZATION. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of June 23, 1838.] 

There is either a most strange delusion, or an obstinate wick- 
edness in men, in relation to this matter of expatriating our 
colored people — probably both — for delusion — " strong delusion" 
generally attends a long course of transgression. We believe, 
if there is any one crime in this land, on which the Father of the 
human family looks down with more displeasure than on any 
other, it is on this deliberate and malicious wrong and insult en- 
tertained by a portion of the proud people of this country towards 
their humbler brethren — a deliberate, premeditated, cool-blooded 
plot to banish them from their native land, and to send them to 
liie most undesirable spot on earth. God commands us to love 
our neighbor as ourselves. Christ our Lord tells us in the story 
of the good Samaritan, who is our neighbor, and what loving 
him is, in practice. We ask the reverends and honorables, who 
compose the official list of New Hampshire Colonization, if the 
good Samaritan would have joined the Colonization Soeiety. The 
question need only be asked. The idea of such a man as he, 
entering into a conspiracy like this, is so absurd, as to be almost 
ludicrous on the very face of it. Colonization is hate of one's 
neighbor, of the very deepest and most far-reaching kind. 

Bui the organization is getting to be matter of form mcrel}- — 
it can't act. It may raise contributions of some amount — but no 
widows' mites — and not from many hands. It is impotent malice 
now — and kept up, probably, as a set-off effort versus anti-slavery. 
We are loath to speak severely of the names who compose this 
benevolent enterprise, but cannot help it. If we feel justly to- 
wards the plot, we feel severely, and must speak as we feel. It is 
not only a wicked plot against our innocent and injured (ah, in- 
jured beyond reparation) brethren, but it is a most mean and 
dishonorable service, done at the bidding of the slaveholder of 
the South. He wants to get the free man of color away, so that 
he can the more securely grind down the colored bond man. 
Poor Mr. Observer remarks that " the colored man must have a 



COLONIZATION. 49 



soil of his own, before he can rise." Pray, what does he mean 
by a soil of his own ? soil that he owns 1 or a sort of hlaclc soil ? 
Can't he own soil in this country? Truly he can, if these Ob- 
servers will only get out of the way, and let us win him his liber- 
ty, and let him work for wages. Free colored people are rising 
now as rapidly and as palpably as water ever rose in a freshet. 
They rise, as fast as such philanthropists as the Observer fall. 
The Observer's fall is their rise, and his rise their fall. Colored 
men can earn money and buy and own soil, and do now buy and 
own it. They need not go to Africa for soil. The land they 
own here is their soil, and the country they are born in is their 
native country. A man's native country (this is said for the 
especial benefit of Observers and colonizationists) is the country 
a man is born in. He can't have but one. He can't be born in 
one country, and have a native land somewhere else — in some 
other country. The land he is born on, and no other, is his na- 
tive land, and it is equally so with colored people, and those who 
have less or no color. No American, United States-born man 
can have two native lands, or can have one without the limits of 
America. He can no more be born here and have him a native 
land in Africa, than an African, born on the Gold Coast, can 
make him out a native land here in New England. This is really 
so — there is no mistake — there is no two ways about it. This is 
a cardinal point, and it ought to be settled and made clear to the 
minds of our colonization brethren. They have a strong notion 
of restoring colored people to their native Africa — to their own 
soil, as the Observer calls it — where they can rise. The soil of 
Africa is supposed to be theirs by a kind of nativity, though they 
were born here, and their fathers and grandfathers before them, 
and their fathers not only American-born, in some cases, but " as 
white," as the African prince said of the Dane — the first creature 
of that complexion he ever saw — " as white as the very devil," — 
not only white, but ichitc slaveholders, owners of their own chil- 
dren — sellers of their own blood and bones. What soil have 
they in Africa then, on which they can rise ? None, unless they 
go and buy it, which they will never do. And what does the 
Observer mean by rising ? He means getting to be governor, 
5 



50 COLONIZATION. 



councillor, general court man, deputy secretary, dancing master, 
clerk in a store, dandy, — any of these elevations, which white- 
ness of outside and total lack of inside, will give folks here. 

Now colored people don't want this sort of elevation ; all they 
want is common liberty — common humanity — a common sort of 
human chance for their lives. They don't care about rising very 
high. As to rising out of the dust and dunghill, into which this 
inlmman people have trodden them that they will do, as soon as 
colonizationists will take their feet off of their necks and breasts, 
where they are now planted. They stand on the very breasts of 
the colored people, and look down and taunt them with incapacity 
to rise; and wickedly say to them, I'll step off of you, if you 
will creep away to Africa before you rise. You may go freely — 
with your own conserit — mind that ; you are not to be forced 
away ; but unless you do most voluntarily and freely consint, I 
shall stand here, with both my Anglo-Saxon hinrl-feet plump on 
your breast bone, where the niglit-mare plants her hoof, shod all 
round with palsy, and you never can rise till you rise to the 
judgment. It is a pity you can't rise in this country ; but you 
see how it is. God has placed you in an inferior position ; you 
are evidently beneath me, and I above you. I am your friend. 
I belong to an " American Union for your race's relief," and also 
to a " Liberian association, auxiliary to said Union ;" and be- 
sides, your people, when they stand up straight here, and we are 
not standing on them, have an unpleasant fragrance which annoys 
our noses exceedingly ; but as you lay now, right under our noses, 
somehow or other we do not seem to smell you. And moreover 
we are in the way of evangelizing the world ; we've got that work 
on our hands, and are in a hurry about it — and we must take in 
Africa, and we don't want to go there. The climate is deadly, 
the people black and inferior, and we are not exactly on terms 
with them, and we want you to do what is to be done there, in 
the way of evangelizing. You can do it well enough for black 
people, though you can't rise to human level here. We want to 
colonize you for the sake of Africa — the millions of Africa. 
Oh, how our hearts bleed (now we think on't) for poor, benighted 
Africa! And then, that accursed, bloody slave trade — we want 



THE NEW HAMPSHIRE PATRIOT. 51 

that stopped. Why, our Congress declares it piracy. We wont 
have the market stopped. We'll keep up slavery here, in an 
improved state. We'll ameliorate, and have it done "kindly;" 
but that traffic on salt water must be stopped, and you must go 
to Africa and put it down there. Q. E. D. 



THE NEW HAMPSHIRE PATRIOT. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of November 17, 1838.] 

A FRIEND has shown us this week's number, and we see by it 
that poor Mr. Barton is yet at home. We wonder people should 
be so insensible to the pleasures of journeying. To be sure, the 
season is getting to be inauspicious — the trees are naked, and the 
landscape muddy, and the winds chilled, and the music of the birds 
hushed — all, all very uncongenial to such a mellijluotis spirit as the 
patriots of New Hampshire. But still we somehow feel disap- 
pointed that he don't travel more. We would respectfully suggest 
to Mr. Barton the interesting objects with which this free country 
abounds — all parts of which he cannot yet have visited. Has he 
ever been to the White Sulphur springs ? He need be under no 
apprehension in going there. To be sure, complexion is attended 
with inconvenience there, and blood has its hazards. But we 
think Judge Larrimer and Colonel Singleton and General Carter 
and Major Thornton would stand the friend of a Colonel from 
tlie North, and prevent him any disagreeable consequences of an 
indiscriminate operation of the domestic slave trade. They are 
keen observers. They know the invasions the peculiar institu- 
tion has made upon the Anglo-Saxon color, and they know how 
the pure Americo-Anglo-Saxon has verged towards the servile 
shadows without coming within the lawful scope of the institution, 
and then the symptomatic cry of " nigger," ever and anon breaking 
out asleep and awake, would reveal to them at once that the Colo- 
nel had the genuine negro-phobia, which a nominal slave never 
has, and which goes so hard with doubtful white people. They 
would protect any northern gentleman against being imprisoned 



52 THE NEW HAMPSHIRE PATRIOT. 

and sold for fees, provided they could be satisfied that his pro- 
slavery merits overbalanced his colored liabilities — which we 
think might easily be vouched. The Colonel has a vein of 
'* chivalry" about him, which would go a good way in offset to 
mere color of liability, which after all is but prima facie evidence 
of servility. — We warrant him a journey to the White Sulphur 
against the Zajr/u/ claims of any person or persons whomsoever. 

Then there is Texas — the Colonel has not, peradventure, been 
to Texas. It is a place of resort for people of enterprise, and 
where patriotism is a ready passport to consideration, although 
it has been slanderously styled a valley of villains, field of felons, 
sink of scoundrels, sewer of scamps, &:.c. &/C. Yet it is a most 
republican clime, " where patriots most do congregate." 

There is Arkansas too — all glorious in new-born liberty — 
fresh and unsullied, like Venus out of the ocean — that newly- 
discovered star in the firmament-banner of this republic. Sister 
Arkansas, with her bowie knife graceful at her side, like the 
huntress Diana with her silver bow — her knife dripping with the 
heart's blood of her senators and councillors, shed in legislative 
debate, — O, it would be refreshing and recruiting to an exhaust- 
ed patriot to go and replenish his soul at her fountains. The 
newly-evacuated lands of the Cherokee, too — a sweet place now 
for a lover of his country to visit, to renew his self-complacency 
by wandering among the quenched hearths of the expatriated 
Indians, a land all smoking with the red man's departing curse — 
a malediction that went to the centre. Yes, and Florida — blos- 
soming and leafy Florida, yet warm with the life-blood of Osceola 
and his warriors, shed gloriously under flag of truce. Why 
should a patriot of such a fancy for nature immure himself in the 
cells of the city, and forego such an inviting and so broad a land- 
scape? Ite viator. Go forth, traveller, and leave this mouldy 
editing to less elastic fimcies. We would respectfully incite our 
Colonel to travel. What signifies? Journey — wander — go forth 
— itinerate — exercise — perambulate — roam. 

We cannot sustain ourselves or our waning cause against the 
reasonings of this military chieftain if he stays at home and con- 
centrates his powers. Nigger nigger nigger, and nigger, and 



THE NEW HAMPSHIRE PATRIOT. ^3 



besides that nigger, and moreover nigger, and therefore nigger, 
and hence nigger, and wherefore nigger, and more than all that, 
and yielding every thing else, " bobaiition !" urged with the pecu- 
liar force and genius of this deadly writer — with his grace, point 
and delicacy — with his " niliil tttigit, quod Jion ornavit." We 
crave a truce. We appeal to the magnanimity of the Patriot, — 
to his nighthood — to go abroad, and leave us in apprentice hands 
or some journeyman's ; or if he won't travel in courtesy, we be- 
seech him to turn his editorship upon other enemies than us. Let 
him point his guns at the Statesman, or the Courier. 

But if we must meet him, we protest against encountering the 
arguments aforesaid. That we are a nigger we can't deny, and 
we can't help it. That our little paper is a " Nigger Herald," 
we can't deny, and we can't help it. What signifies arguing 
that against us, all the time? We don't deny it — we never did 
deny it — we never shall. And what can we do? We can't wash 
off our color. We cannot change our Ethiopian skin any more 
than the Patriot can its " spots." The sun has looked upon us, 

and burnt upon us a complexion incompatible with freedom? 

Is it so? Will the democratic Patriot aver this? Are we to 
be denied the right of a hearing because we are a "nigger?" 
Are we to be deprived in New Hampshire of human considera- 
tion because we are black, and shall Cyrus Barton dispose of us 
thus, because he is white? We lay before the yeomanry of 
New Hampshire the appalling truth, that slavery has rooted itself 
deep into the heart of American liberty; — " Nigger Herald," 
argues this snow-drop Colonel ; " Bobaiition !" and our appeal is 
silenced. We warn the country that slavery is overshadowing 
the North, and that ranting and rampant professing democrats 
will give their very backs to the southern cart-whip. " Nigger !" 
replies the Honorable Cyrus Barton ; " eh, old nigger !" " old 
black nigger !" Is it an answer, we ask the country? 

But poor Mister Barton is jealous we are after votes for James 
Wilson. If he is really so, we pity him. He is non compos if he 
suspects it. He ought to be sent right up to the town farm. 
Votes for James Wilson ! Is this the purpose and aim of the 
great anti-slavery enterprise that now shakes Europe and America 
5* 



54 REVEREND RALPH RANDOLPH GURLEY. 

to the centre? Is West India emancipation a plot to defeat the 
Patriot's democracy here in universal New Hampshire ? Are 
George Thompson and Daniel O'Connell and Henry Brougham 
thundering for human liberty in Exeter Hall, (henceforth and 
forever the cradle of liberty — not the cradle of the bastard infant, 
rocked in Faneuil Hall of Boston, now formally dedicated to the 
Genius of Slavery,) are these champions of liberty plotting with 
tiie fifteen hundred anti-slavery societies of America to defeat 
the election of Governor John Page? 

We give our poor jaundice-visioned neighbor no other answer 
than this to his paltry accusations about plotting against his par- 
tisans. We have other and bigger objects altogether. 



REVEREND RALPH RANDOLPH GURLEY. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Dec. 8, 1838.] 

We must give the whole of this euphonic line, so harmonious 
to the colored ear. This silver-spoken expatriationist has ap- 
peared again, we understand, in our New England horizon, with 
his northern aspect on, having doffed his slaveholder phases, as 
he crossed his equinoctial — the Mason and Dixon line. He 
ranges from tropic to tropic along his crooked ecliptic — from 
New Orleans on the south, to — the old town hall in Concord 
(his northmost declination) on the north — shifting his disk, like 
the changing moon. 

Hail to thee, in the " clear cold sky" of the North, thou star 
of evil promise to liberty ! Welcome, caterer of slavery, to the 
regions of paid labor ! Thou reverend advocate of a double 
origin of the human family, and denier that " God hath made of 
one blood all nations of men," &lc. Thou promoter of human 
banishment, and sunderer of the strong ties of native country, 
hail to thy dubious aspect — thy Janus fades ! Come, stir, with 
thy magician's rod, among the hushed and abashed mobocracy 
of your native New England. Kindle afresh the slumbering fires 



REVEREND RALPH RANDOLPH GURLEY. 55 

of prejudice. Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of persecution ! 
Mount the consecrated pulpit, under the ushering of the shepherds 
of the Jlocic, 7oho care for the sheep, and " pour" thence " your 
leprous distilment into" the common ear, till " public sentiment" 
shall "posset and curd" under your infusion, and the blotch and 
tetter of colonization shall " bark out over all" the surface of 
the body politic. 

Thou angler for consent to exile ! thou fisher for funds in the 
pockets of prejudice ! thou recruiting sergeant for the ranks of 
banishment ! Thou art earning the deep and indelible displea- 
sure of thy colored brother. He must forgive thee unpardonable 
enmity, and " seventy times seven," and God help him to charity 
unbounded — for he needs it in this emergency. 

Elliot Cresson, too, a satellite of the Secretary, is up here, 
on a winter campaign. Why does not Elliot cast the shadovt^ of 
his broad brim on the snows of Canada, this winter, in the ser- 
vice of the Patriots, and help them become a free republic, and 
.so break up that nest of self-emancipated niggers? For if this 
province of Canada were only a free, democratic state, it would 
not afford a refuge to those insolent fugitives, but they would have 
to be " given up on claim of those to whom" their souls and 
bodies, their time and eternity, " might be due. ' Bethink thee. 
Friend ! Elliot, thou mightest strike a capital stroke for thy 
master (who can enlarge his brim till it is as broad as William 
Penn's, to suit his turn) in the extinction of this tyrant mon- 
archy, this refuge of runaway democrats. Thou mightest solicit 
the fugitives, with good prospect of colonizing them. If thou 
shouldest succeed in abolishing monarchy in said province, and 
open a way for the restoration of the lost property to be found 
there, thou mightest then solicit it for consent to great advantage. 
Thou mightest offer the candidates, either a sudden, and, as it 
were, a reluctant return to the patriarchs from whom they strayed, 
(with fetter on heel and hand-cuff on wrist,) or the glorious alter- 
native of voluntary emigration, " with their own consent," to the 
steepled paradise of Liberia. And would they not be free to go 
or stay ? Yea, verily. Thee would say to them, " Friend, I do 
thee no injustice. Go to Liberia ; but go freely. I abate not a 



56 ICHABOD BARTLETT.— OSCEOLA. 

tithe of thy free, thy voluntary, thy spontaneous choice. Go it 
thee choose. If not, stay and return south with me, whence, in 
an evil hour, thou came out." Peradventure some of them would 
" consent," for they have been south. Yes, reader, they have 
been south. 



ICHABOD BARTLETT.— OSCEOLA. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of January 17, 1839.] 

Anti-slavery engagements prevented our earlier noticing to 
our readers the opening lecture before the Concord Lyceum, by 
Ichabod Bartlett. It was on the very important subject of our 
country's treatment of the aboriginal inhabitants of this land. 
A subject, on which we should think it very difficult for any 
American to be eloquent — but an American Indian. Our white 
men have acted a part towards their red countrymen, which we 
should think would embarrass their flights of fancy. 

From the landing of the fathers, up to the last Indian ouster 
civilization and Christianity (such as they were) have been crowd- 
ing upon the Indian, and hunting him as a beast of the forest 
Every advantage has been taken of his unacquaintance with the 
roguery of reJincclYi^e. He has been circumvented, overreached, 
cheated, and called meantime a savage, all the way from the 
pilgrim-landing to the " father of waters," across which his 
mournful canoe now bears the remnants of the mighty forest 
nations. He has been all the way and all the time htinrhed by 
our republicanism, while that has been blustering about our jus- 
tice and magnanimity, and his cruelty and perfidy — because his 
tomahawk did not always outbear the patience of Job. We have 
thrust him over the Mississippi. Civilization and Christianity 
are building steamboats to follow on, and rout him from his wil- 
derness there. And although he is promised a permanent heme 
and hunting ground, the smoke v/ill scarce have curled above his 
new-built wigwam, before our enterprise will hunch him farther, 
till he disappears, or is driven to turn his despairing canoe out 



ICHABOD BARTLETT— OSCEOLA. 57 

on the shoreless Pacific. The church will see that he has a 
scattered missionary after him, meanwhile, and the monthly con- 
cert will be entertained with the geography of his wanderings. 
But not an effort will be made (none has been) to reform the 
white man of that character which makes it impossible for the 
Indian to live with him. The cheapest mode of repentance for 
the American church with regard to the Indian and the Negro 
seems to be to " remove'^ one " by treaty" toward the illimitable 
sunset, and to "colonize" the other, (as fast as they become /ref) 
" with their own consent," on the oblivious shores of Western 
Africa! 

But to the lecture. The orator spoke of " Osceola, or rather 
of his countrymen." He depicted, with great power, and we 
presume historical accuracy, the wrongs of the Indians — which 
is the history of the Indians, with the exception of those who 
chanced to fall into the hands of the "fanatical" Quaker, Penn. 
With the keen sarcasm and eloquent denunciation, which distin- 
guish the lecturer in his pleadings for his more fortunate clients 
than the " Indian chief," he exposed the treachery, the baseness, 
the duplicity, the tyranny, the savage cruelty, the more than sai'- 
age — the republican and civilized — barbarity of this country. He 
paid some merited compliments to the learned law-officers of this 
great republic, for their official opinions, as counsel, advising this 
mighty nation on the legal effect of some of their processes to 
" extinguish Indian titles" to country and to home and hearth- 
stone. We wish these cabinet officers had been present. But 
their clients were, and it may not well become parties to abuse 
their ingenious counsel. 

We do not attempt a complimentary notice of this lecture. 
We felt mortified and humbled through the whole of its delivery, 
eloquent, powerful, graceful and forcible as it was. We felt that 
a few such finely drawn laments was all the relief the country 
promised the wretched Indian. The generous and indignant 
orator himself would say, we presume, if asked what could be 
done for the Indian, that nothing could be done ; that he must 
retire ; that he could not be civilized ; that he was irrecoverably 
a savacre, and that he must retire before, or be trodden beneath, 



58 ICHABOD BARTLETT.— OSCEOLA. 

the inevitable westward movement of civilization. He would 
not say the white man must recognize the brotherhood of the 
savage, and respect his human rights and endure his aboriginid 
customs and habits of life, here on the land. He would treat 
him honorably, to be sure, and keep faith with him, and he re- 
spects aiid admires the heroism, the unbowing independence, the 
savage and forest poetry of his character. He spoke with enthu- 
siasm of the bravery of their chiefs, and the wild native eloquence 
of their orators. He quoted largely from their half-civilized 
writers, even. But would he say that the policy of William Penri 
sliould be observed towards them — the principles of non-resist- 
ing, unarmed peace, of primitive Christianity, which would m- 
mediately abolish our Indian-pliohia, and give them place in the 
American human family? We think not. He does not hold to 
the immediate abolition of negro slavery — that mighty national 
iniquity and shame, before which the wrongs of the Indian 
dwindle into insignificancy. We have trespassed on the Indian. 
We have enslaved the Negro. We have dcfravded the Indian. 
We have extinguished the Negro. But we cannot pursue the 
theme here. 

The lecture was " domnciatori/." The lecturer used " harsh 
language." He called the white people " miscreants and cai- 
tiffs," and other names of homely, old-fashioned severity. He 
did not style them southern brethren, or northern brethren. He 
did not call the Indians savages and Indian dogs, inferior race, 
that could not live or rise among white men, that must be sent to 
their own appropriate country, the woods. He did not palliate 
oiu' conduct in the least, but denounced it worse than ever Gar- 
rison did the conduct of slaveholders. We refer the denouncers 
of abolitionists to this authority for calling things by their right 
names. And we call upon the learned and eloquent lecturer, to 
demand of his white countrymen justice and humanity for the 
remaining Indians — that they invite and help them back to their 
native soil and their homes, and that the national treasures be 
expended in reforming, in this behalf, the wicked scorn and 
haughtiness of the irkite man, amid which an Indian can't live 
in safety or peace — instead of spending it in miserable politics, 



MASSACHUSETTS. 59 



or more miserable preparations for civilized quarrelling with 
other nations by land or sea. We call on him to advocate a na- 
tional love of the Indian as a man, to gather associations in his 
behalf, like ours for the more deep' -'.vronged and insulted negro, 
and we call on him further to enlist in the cause of his colored 
countrymen and brethren, sprung with himself from one stock, 
of one kindred, of one brotherhood, of one destiny. We ask 
him in the name of humanity, why he, an eloquent advocate, 
stands coldly and more than silently by, while those of feebler 
powers are breasting the storm of a most savage and brute public 
sentiment, which is crushing to the dust and mire the colored 
man of this country and his uncolored friends. 



MASSACHUSETTS. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Jan. 2G, 1839.] 

We have been surprised at the strange proposal in the resolu- 
tion passed at Worcester, for the establishment of a new state 
anti-slavery paper in the old commonwealth. We don't know but 
it will be regarded by our brethren in that state, as " out of our 
sphere" to meddle with that proposal. But we cannot refrain — 
though too late to affect, so far as our small influence might, the 
movement contemplated there, which is probably consummated 
this week. There are three objects to be affected by it — urging 
political action independent of party ; exclusive devotion to anti- 
slavery ; and control by the State society. 

As to the first, who can urge political action, and all other, 
with the force and the single-eyed constancy of the Liberator ? 
As to this exclusive devotion, there seems to us some indetinite- 
ness. J"'or how broad is anti-slavery ? Whether the Liberator 
be or not exclusively devoted to anti-slavery, depends on the ques- 
tion how broad is anti-slavery proper, and on how wide and deep 
foundations it must be based. The anti-slavery of many aboli- 
tionists is exceedingly narrow, and of very slight depth. Bona- 
parte and Murat were anticipating a petty battle in Egypt. — 



60 MASSACHUSETTS. 



Napoleon, who looked more deeply into things than the king 
of Naples, said solemnly, that " on its result hung the fate of 
Europe." " The fate of this battle, at least," said Murat — for 
he could see no farther. We do not pretend, for ourselves, to 
limit, very definitely, the anti-slavery enterprise. We hold its 
" gross and scope," to be the mere abolition of American negro 
slavery. 

As to the matter of control, we caution brethren, with all de- 
ference, not to covet control of the Liberator. The controllers 
of that sheet and its conductor would find themselves clothed 
with an awkward trust. That paper started the anti-slavery 
enterprise. It pioneered it. It pioneers it to this day, and will 
and must, God willing, pioneer it to the end of it. Whoever 
undertakes its control, will find they have mistaken their strength. 
The continental Congress would have acted unwisely, had they 
assumed special c >ntrol of the movements of the continental arm\ 
and its grave chieftain. Those of us, who came into the service 
late, — after societies were formed, and who are the creatures of 
societies — may be properly under society supervision. But the 
originator of the enterprise — the bold projector of the expedi- 
tion— ^the Columbus of this exploration for the new world of 
Liberty, — to control and limit his course, would be too much like 
subjugating the compass to the regulation of the rash mariner, — 
or the north star itself, to the influences of the vibrating needle. 

The Liberator undertakes no guidance of abolitionists. It 
seeks none. It would accept none if proffered. It could exer- 
cise none. It wants no followers. It has too much personal 
freedom to want followers. It would place no dependence on 
them. It has no respect for them. But it will pioneer us. We 
can't help it. The Liberator can't help it. It has a mental and 
moral calibre different from that of the rest of us. It has a 
clearer vision, a profounder sigacity than any and all of us. In 
a storm, all hands would call the Liberator to the helm. Every 
department of our now extended enterprise feels its mighty im- 
pulses. All would at once miss its agency, if withdrawn. If 
God should withdraw it, our cause would go on, and other hands 
be emboldened and strengthened to grasp our flag staff, and 



MASSACHUSETTS. 61 



cheer us onward. If we strike down the Liberator, God will 
carry on our cause, but 7iot by our instrumentality. 

To hoist a superseding flag (and that is the secret of this move- 
ment) in Massachusetts, seems to us would be the height of folly. 
It would be a superfluity — a sort of rush-light illumination in aid 
of day-light.' It is grossly unnecessary there ; and it could not 
be maintained. Wo to the rash hand that should undertake to 
hold that flag in the wind. The rude breezes and rough weather, 
that float the strong sheet of the Liberator, and unfurl its solemn 
folds, would shiver the rash ensign, 

" Till its rent canvass fluttering strowed the gale." 

The storms that are the breath and element of the Liberator, 
that flag could not live in. And why hoist it 1 where is the need, 
and where the occasion ? Did France want new banners in Italy, 
when her eagles had stooped from the high Alps upon the Po I 
Did she want other leading, after Marengo and Lodi ? Did she 
lack champions while Napoleon was trampling the " vineyards of 
Europe ?" This may sound extravagantly, to speak of Napoleon 
and Washington along with your mobbed printer , whom you know 
and see, — but mark us, brethren, the day comes, when a little 
antiquity, ay, a very little, will invest the name of that printer 
with a magnitude and a dignity, which will cast forever into for- 
iretfulness, these sioordsmen and statesmen. We hazard the ex- 
travagant prediction. 

A state anti-slavery paper in Massachusetts while the Libera- 
tor lives ! An anti-slavery editor there, while Garrison is in 
the field ! Preposterous — suicidal — vulgarly ungrateful ! Why, 
strike down every flag of us, from Maine to the Ohio, — from the 
gorgeous streamer that floats in firmament beauty over the tower- 
less city of Penn to our own little rag that wrestles here with 
the breath of the White Mountains, — strike us all down at a blow, 
and we should not be missed like the mighty Liberator. There 
liangs, and should forever hang, the broad pendant of the anti- 
slavery fleet ! On the deck of the Massachusetts rides Nelson — 
Nelson of the Nile. God grant we hasten no Trafalgar — none 
at least without its being purchased of the enemy. 
6 



62 ANTI-SLAVERY DIVISIONS. 

Brethren of Massachusetts, we solemnly warn you, lay no rash 
hand on the Liberator. Do not embarrass it. Do not call off 
its energies from the enemy upon yourselves. You need all its 
power. You never needed it more. Has it errors ? Put them 
down — put them down in its own columns. Those are now open 
to you — close them not up. Don't charge it with errors which 
you dare not refute. Pour your antidote alongside its bane, in its 
own columns. That is your only safety and honor. We hint no 
opinions on the subjects of your complaint. But we declare this. 
No man should embarrass or limit at all the right of discussion. 
Don't overawe that right. Give it free scope. It is the life and 
salvation of your enterprise. It is the very breath of anti-slavery. 
Encourage the freest — the very freest expression of honest opin- 
ion. Above all, cherish the man who pays no homage to human 
authority. The age should cherish him as the apple of its eye. 



ANTI-SLAVERY DIVISIONS. 
[From the Herald of Freedom of March 16, 1839.] 

Discord, alienation, and open feud, breaking out in the anti- 
slavery camp ! Not differences of opinion, — not mental disa- 
greement — discussion — debate, — but hostility, distrust and mu- 
tual crimination ! — and among such men — Stanton, Garrison, 
Phelps, — and such bodies — the executive committees of the 
National Society and of the pioneer society of the old common- 
wealth. We lament it — are grieved — mortified — alarmed at it. 
Brethren concerned, — is this warrantable 7 Is this a time for in- 
ternal divisions? When the eyes of the disquieted, agitated, awa- 
kened world are just opened upon us, — when, by the help of God, 
we have just arrested to our doings and our cause, the unheeding 
current of mankind, — shall we now amuse them with a gladiator- 
ship of our champions ? And is it time of truce, that we may 
indulge in private encounters upon the wall ! Now, when our 
despairing adversary, terribly enraged, is gathering himself, amid 



A^'TI-SLAVERY DIVISIONS. 63 

mortal wounds, for the final struggle, and Clay leads on the for- 
lorn hope, — Napoleon himself chirging with the Old Guard, 
which never charged but when the field was an Austerlitz or a 
Waterloo ! Is this the time for our champions to turn their steel 
on each other, in sight of both hosts? It must not — nay, it 
SHALL not be. We demand of our brethren, that it cease. We 
call on the Voice of Freedom and the Advocate of Freedom, our 
strong northmost brothers in arms, on Maine and Vermont, 
to join us in this remonstrance. We who stand afar back here 
to watch the frontier — along these Canadian borders — our bre- 
thren will allow us this license of position. These conflicts must 
cease. We inquire not the cause. We demand cessation of the 
effects. We had heard of anticipated troubles before the Massa- 
chusetts annual meeting — but dreamed of nothing like this. We 
apprehended nothing but some repetition of clerical appcllancy. 
We knew nothing of names. But, alas ! it is deeper than that. 
How deep and how wide, we know not. We admire and love 
these vanguard-abolitionists — every man of them. Our admira- 
tion has been thought, by some apprehensive brethren, to savor 
of homage. Perhaps it was over-ardently expressed. But we 
aver to our bold and unworshipping brethren, that we feel not the 
slightest inclination to do homage to any body, — to any man or 
number of men, individuals, majorities, or the entire anti-slavery 
" brotherhood ;" — a divinity, this last — much more likely to be 
worshipped, in our apprehension, than any individual in such an 
enterprise as ours. 

We have admired our " mighty men." Our heart has swelled 
within us, as we have seen them strike for the slave. Though 
never aspiring to the front fight among them, these sons of Je- 
hoiada, — the " Three" or the " Thirty Chief," — yet we have par- 
taken in the " stormy joy," as one and another of them has done 
deathless deeds ; as " one has lifted up his spear against eight 
hundred:" another "smitten the Philistines, till his hand was 
weary, and clave to the sword ;" others broken " through the 
host to the well of Bethlehem ;" "slain lion-like Moabites— or 
lions themselves, in pits, in time of snow ;" — the Abishais — the 
Beoajahs — the Tachmonites. We have seen their deeds from 



64 AXTI-SLAVERY DIVISIONS. 

our watch in the mountains, and with joy have skirmished along 
their distant outskirts. Now we behold them at each others' 
breast, and the enemy rejoicing like the II ions at the feuds of 
Agamemnon and Achilles. 

We assume not the compromiser or the pacificator. We 
should not incline to these offices, if we were entitled to their 
exercise. But M-e have a word to speak, ex positione. Will not 
our gallant brethren of Maine and the Green Mountains back us 
up, in it? We speak impulsivchj — we trust not " unadvisedly." 
This division among our anti-slavery brethren, — let it cease — let 
it not be. Let every dissentient brother — each for himself — at 
once divest his spirit of every spark of feeling that lies wrong- 
fully in the way of an immediate re-coop eration of the whole 
band. Let each heart be sternly and in secret, self-examined, 
before God, and prayerfully purified of all error in this behalf, 
in the impartial and charitable spirit of the disciples of Christ. 
Whatever this may cost, Christian abolitionists are able — they 
can afford it. Whatever difficulties lie in the way — abolitionists 
have been nurtured on difficulties, — whatever obstacles, — these, 
for years, have been their daily bread. The word " impossible," 
however good English or even " good French" it may be, can 
never be good anti-slavery. As our position authorizes or tole- 
rates us in making this demand, — the important, the vital position 
of our contending brethren demands of them compliance with 
our entreaty. It is but to be willed, and it is done. We speak 
to Abolitionists and to Christians, and we speak "for the 
suffering and the dumb." Our prayer answered, let thick obliv- 
ion rest upon the past — the recent past only — for on these latter 
years of our time shall human remembrance settle and abide in 
the illimitable future. Let not these " vapors," brethren, " foul, 
pestilent" and congregating, deepen into clouds to obscure the 
glorious retrospection. 



-1^ 



WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN. 65 

WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN. 
[From the Herald of Freedom of March 23, 1839.] 

There is prospect of this country and Great Britain going to 
war. Our Congress has voted, with unexampled unanimity, im- 
mense appropriations to carry it on, although we believe none of 
them voted to take any personal share in the danger. They have 
voted enough money probably to buy the disputed territory over and 
over and over. But this would not be getting the land honorably 
to our Eagle. Where will be the honor of getting it, or keeping 
it, or losing it, by a " rough and tumble" — blood and di7-t — throt- 
tle and stab conflict; like that herd of wild horses, let loose from 
their troopers a while since. They did kick and slam and bite 
like " all possessed," those horses ; and they left hardly a mane or 
a tale of the whole herd, so thoroughly had they learnt the trade 
of their elegant riders. So highly had they been educated. 

Mr. Webster and Mr. Adams, they say, were very animated 
and heroic. What must have been their emotions at contem- 
plating the waste of human substance — the wreck and havoc of 
industry — the disorder and disarrangement of the peaceful busi- 
ness of the world — the ghastly waste of life — the maimings — the 
slaughters — the devastation of the outraged earth and the incar- 
nadining of the violated seas — the widows made — the fatherless — 
the bereaved — the heart-breakings and the wailing that shall go 
up to God like " the voice of the blood of Abel crying from the 
ground." O, the extent of mischief and misery ! and yet these 
grave scholars and professors of the religion of Christ, ramp at 
the coming of it, like old war horses when they hear the trumpet. 

Meantime the land trembles with passion and excitement, and 
seems ready with one accord to rush into the bloody strife. The 
press feeds the flame and carries the war cry from hill to hill, 
and the pulpit is dumb. 

And all for what ? Why, a paltry quantum of " eastern lands," 

such as our fanatical people (we ask pardon, our enterprising 

people, — it is the anti-slavery folks that wear the other name) 

were speculating about, a year or two since — a strip of timber 

6* 



66 UNPARALLELED OUTRAGE. 

land, containing lots of clear stuff— to say nothing of the tur- 
pentitie. For this patch of land we will waste dollars enough to 
cover it — shed blood enough to inundate it — tall men enough 
we'll immolate and lay low, to vie with all the pines felled by the 
trespassers, for that timber will break human timbers innumera- 
ble, — will make occasion for the whole ground as a grave-yard — 
will pour out red blood more than all the pines of Madawaska 
can pour turpentine. The debatable land we'll shroud in a 
smoke, dunner and pitchier than a burn of the whole forest would 
send up, in a time of drought, — we'll raise war on the Canadian 
North — war in the South — not with the hunted Seminole, but 
with the resuscitated negro — for the thunders of it would wake 
him from the dead. His dull ear will catch the universal cry, — 
war on the ocean — war along the shore — war on the frontiers. 
O, what an adequate consideration for all this, the domain con- 
trol of this strip of land ! the fixing of a disputed line — matter 
of a petty land-lawsuit. 

Away with your national honor ; it is a foul dishonor. Away 
M'ith your pride ; it is shame. Away with your eagle ; he is a foul 
bird of prey, a hunter of carcasses, a devourer of carrion. He 
is an unfit emblem of civilized man. 

We enter our solemn, indignant, unheeded and despised protest 
against this savage, barbarian contest. 



UNPARALLELED OUTRAGE! 

[From the Herald of Freedom of May 25, 1839.] 

" OUTRAGE AND IMPOSITION." 

The Boston Courier of the 16th inst. contains an article, which 
the veteran editor tacitly endorses, detailing one of the most 
flagrant violations of American sentiment on record. Such an 
instance of abolition insolence and fraud and of colored impu- 
dence, we scarcely remember since the morbid excitement begun 
against our southern institutions. The particulars are detailed 
with frightful fidelity by the Courier's accomplished correspond- 



UNPARALLELED OUTRAGE. 67 

ent, whose indignation seems to have been kindled to the utmost 
pitch of gentlemanly endurance. And really if the christian pub- 
lic passes this over, the worst apprehensions of the country, from 
this abolition excitement, will have been realized. Popular for- 
bearance should have limits. It is already ceasing to be a virtue. 
The outrage was on board the steamer Massachusetts. A pas- 
senger of the name of Buffum, says the article, " had with him, 
beside his wife, colored women, for whom he i-rocured tick- 
ets, WITHOUT GIVING ANY INTIMATION OF THE FACT, AND PUT 
THEM IN THE LADIES' CABIN, WHERE THEY SLEPT ALL NIGHT 
WITHOUT THE KNOWLEDGE OF ANY ONE." 

What a concatenation of perpetrations have we here ! perpe- 
tration upon perpetration ! Tickets procured for colored women, 
without forewarning the captain ! Women thrust into the ladies' 
cabin — not only women among ladies — but colored women amoncp 
white ladies ; for though the correspondent does not expressly 
avow it, we have to infer they were white — and the ugly crea- 
tures had the deliberate insolence to sleep there. The height of 
impudence this abolition has already led them to. They could 
sleep in a ladies' cabin, and the ladies themselves did not know 
it. " Without the knowledge of «/??/ one," says the correspond- 
ent. O, their perilous condition, and they not know it ! And 
but for the vigilance of a colored chambermaid, the ladies might 
have slept all night — a chambermaid, " excellent in her place," 
says the correspondent. She was in the same cabin, to be sure — 
but then not for the impudent purpose of sleep ; she was there 
for vigilance — " in her place," to serve the ladies. Had these 
creatures been in there for service instead of rest, they would 
have been in their places ; but they were in for rest, which was 
an " outrage," and they slept and concealed their color, which 
was an " imposition." 

And what if the ladies had found it out in the night — " in the 
dead waste and middle of the night" — what would have been the 
consequence ? What fits they might have had, and what high- 
sterricks gone into, had they waked in the dark, and seen a 
colored something, right there in the berths ! Or what if one 
of them had stuck out her lily hand or her alabaster foot, and 



68 UNPARALLELED OUTRAGE. 

touched naked color — O, she might have run " crazy and ravin' 
distracted !" 

On what pretext were these ugly monsters thrust in there? 
Why, forsooth, they had purchased tickets of admission, and had 
paid for them ! But then they concealed their color. It was a 
fraud upon the captain. He thought all was white and fair. 
They were ugly colored women, and he thought they were ladies 
as pale as a diaper. It was an imposition. We are opposed to 
mobs. We would go far to " prevent" them, in the abstract. 
But there may be cases. We appeal to a candid public — are 
there no limitations ? Is the law an adequate remedy in all cases ? 
Our wives and daughters, they may want to travel — and to what 
are they to be exposed 1 The fairest and most delicate of them 
may sleep in the same apartment, all night, with colored women ' 

But the imposition was detected. The captain traced it to 
this Buffum. He was a real " gentleman," said the Courier's 
correspondent. " No boat or captain stood, in his estimation, 
higher." He told Buffum, " he had no objection to his being 
with the colored women ; and had he asked the favor, he would 
have put them in a room by themselves, where they might have 
slept together." Was he not a gentleman ? And the ladies, in 
whose approving presence he uttered this piece of gentleman- 
ship — were they not real ladies ? O, they were real — prime. 

And they had a mob too, a salt-water mob. " At this mo- 
ment," says the Courier's friend, " the crowd began to get large 
(' property and standing' doubtless) and the excitement to in- 
crease," (" tremendous public excitement," Buckingham's friend 
Patriot would call it) and many began to fear the result — that is, 
fear they should lay hold of Mr. Buffum and the colored women, 
and throw them overboard ! The mob always "fears the result." 
It always tries to prevent itself, and if it can't, it '^ fears the 
residt." 

Mr. Garrison was there. He tried to speak ; but they would 
not allow it. Some sea Atherton or Cushman put the previous 
«]uestion into his mouth, and stopped him. They put it to vote 
right away, and voted that the whole crew was " disgusted." 
The disgust was very general — 77 to '23. " They showed con- 



UNPARALLELED OUTRAGE. 69 

clusively," says the beautiful correspondent of the magnanimous 
Courier, " by their vote and actions, for they would not allow 
Mr. Garrison to speak a word, that they held him and his party 
in this transaction in utter detestation." Mr. Buckingham is all 
for freedom of debate, a detester of Athertonism and Cushman- 
ity ; but that is in Congress, and in a case of party. As a whig, 
he is for it when a Van Buren partisan applies the gag. There 
he is for free discussion, right of petition, &c. &c. " Circum- 
stances alter cases." He endorses fully this instance of gaggery. 
Let him never open his mouth against it in Congress again. He 
would gag free discussion there, if he had occasion. He would 
out-herod Cushman in forestalling debate. 

But they put it to vote — this beautiful boat's crew — without a 
moment's debate or consideration, and they stood disgusted, 77 
to 23 — ^just about the true Congress majority. And at what were 
they disgusted ? Why, that three defenceless women were shel- 
tered by that boat's ribs, instead of shivering on deck, amid the 
tarred cordage, exposed to the mercies of the night sea-winds, 
and peradventure a tempest. They were in comfort and at rest, 
— having, no doubt, thanked God, with tears of gratitude, for so 
unexpected a shelter. Their gentle-hearted sisters were " dis- 
gusted" at this. O, the beautiful ladies! — the gentle and sym- 
pathetic fine ladies! O, the gentlemanly gentlemen, that would 
thrust woman out of doors, at night, upon the sea ! O, the fair 
sex, that would nestle and snore away in their snug cabins, while 
their unhappy sisters had to face the scowl of night, and the sea's 
rude breath on the naked deck ! O, the beautiful sweethearts, 
that could sleep amid scenes like this ! O, the magnanimous 
captain ! to deny to woman the shelter which humanity, in its 
barbarian state, would not deny a dog. Shelter for the night — a 
night at sea ; when cut off from mankind and on the perilous 
deep, a pirate might dream of kindness — with an ample cabin 
for all — with his mercenary pay in his pocket. Why did the un- 
feeling brute want those women to shiver on deck, that night? 
Why ! but to gratify those elegant-souled ladies ! They could 
not sleep if their colored sisters slept ; they could not enjoy their 
cabin, unless the unhappy colored ones were exposed on deck. 



70 LETTER TO ALBE CADY— EXTRACT. 

They must colonize the colored woman, and send her by herself 
to the cold deck, — the boat's Africa — where she might repose 
free of the christian prejudice below. 

A real American scene. A demonstration of the barbarity, 
the injustice, the meanness, the cruelty of the American people. 
We call their attention to their portrait — their picture. We hold 
up this boat scene as a mirror. Let them see in it their reflected 
character and likeness by sea and land. We illustrate coloni- 
zation by this spirit, that would drive out those colored women 
from their sheltered berths, to sleep on the planked deck, covered 
by the night sky, — only it lacks the mockery of getting their 
" consent." A ship's deck, for a warm berth, and a keen, sleep- 
less sea-night, for the rocked repose of the cabin, is the proffer 
of colonization to the colored people. If the illustration is de- 
ticient, it is in this — that colonization does not stop at the deck. 
It throws them overboard into the deep of returnless Africa. It 
banishes them beyond its own walks and limits, where they can 
never again cross its path. The narrow ship affords no such 
" bourne" — such " undiscovered country" as this. 

Those may argue gravely on scenes and transactions like this, 
who can. We have not the argument, the spirit, or the time to 
do it. We speak of it as it strikes us. We feel at it, in some 
measure, we trust, as uncalloused humanity ought to feel. We 
wish we could express our feelings in words fitted to the occasion. 



LETTER TO ALBE CADY— EXTRACT. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of June 1, 1839.] 

Durham, May 27, 1839. 
A. Cadv, Esq. 
My dear sir, — My editorial chair seems to have taken upon it 
the habit of the locomotive, and I have again to pay tribute, 
through your hand, to our little sheet, volatile pede, as well as 
currente enlatno — with flying foot, as well as runaway pen. But 
every position and condition furnish good occasion for assault 



LETTER TO ALBE CADY— EXTRACT. 71 

upon the grand enemy. We may attack it to account, with fly- 
ing artillery, and shoot at it over the croup, like the Parthian — 
though he rode, I believe, without saddle, and we shall not, I 
apprehend, be called on to fight on the retreat. 

I write from the ancient town of Durham, once the home and 
now the mortal resting-place of names known in the stirring 
times of the revolution. It was formerly a place of leading im- 
portance among the towns in New Hampshire off the immediate 
sea shore ; but its supremacy was stolen away by the American 
system, which set up its water-wheels on the falls of the Cocheco 
and the Lamprey. Durham fell into dilapidation by a transfer 
of its trade. Its lively streets, houses clustering together with 
all the sociable proximity of the city, were forsaken by the lum- 
bermen of Barrington and Barnstead and Pittsfield and North- 
wood — and its flagged and worn sidewalks sprung to grass. It 
now seems to be reviving again ; not under the returning in- 
fluences of trade, but the more lasting and substantial thrift of 
agriculture. The land around it is of exceeding fertility and 
beauty, and under the fostering influences of temperance and 
anti-slavery (and of resulting religion) could these be brought to 
bear upon it, it would soon regain an ascendancy, of which no rival 
Dovers or New Markets could deprive it. Its prosperity would 
then be based on the imperishable foundations of good principles 
and good husbandry. Its verdant soil would maintain the popu- 
lation of a city. The ocean flows up into its little creeks, and 
its quiet river is visited by small craft from the sea, distant some 
ten miles. I repeat that anti-slavery, temperance and religion, 
and the enlightened and industrious tilling of the rich ground 
with which a bounteous God has blessed them, would, in a brief 
period, make Durham the pride of the state. Total abstinence 
must make its people temperate. You would not then, as you 
rode into town from the eastward, meet the farmers of the neigh- 
boring region, returning towards the sunset, with faces as red as 
that luminary's in harvest time, and with a light borrowed, not 
where the moon borrows hers, but at the inflammatory fountains of 
the unconscionable village grocer. To bring about this total absti- 
nence, the professors of religion must press the whole power of the 



LETTER TO ALBE CADY— EXTRACT. 



Bible upon the sin of this spirit excitement. They must establish 
and enforce the principle, that the slightest indulgence in ardent 
spirit or any of its auxiliaries, is a crime against God, who de- 
mands of man a worship and a service, which he cannot render, 
when touched, ever so lightly, by this unhallowed inspiration. 
To touch it to the taste, is sin. 

The soul should be left to the utmost use of aJl its faculties 
and powers. Under its care and culture, the landscape would 
then revive and smile like the garden of Eden. The cry of the 
American bondman, for his liberty at the hand of the nation, 
would then reach the ear and the heart of a clear-minded and 
magnanimous community. Every man and every household 
would be abolitionists. The Spirit of God, always striving with 
man till grieved and driven finally away, would be resisted no 
longer, among a people who had crucified their prejudices and 
denied their appetites the strange delights of intoxication. Reli- 
gion would cover the face of the land with the verdure of salva- 
tion. 

On my way I crossed the bold and beautiful Northwood hill. 
A clear pond mirrored at the foot of its western slope. The 
smooth path ascended gently over it, bordered with green. The 
road-side was sowed thick with dandelions, yellow as gold, and 
" rich as the crown of a king ;" and above, as the sun broke out, 
the termagant bobalink hovered, scolding at the delinquent plant- 
ers, and uttering his season cry, " Plant your corn ! plant your 
corn !" From the top of the hill you behold the level-ocean 
region stretching to the sky, and extending the whole semi-circle 
of the horizon. You feel at once that you are in the neighbor- 
hood of the great sea. To the west the rude and rugged inland 
of New Hampshire. A glorious swell of land to inhabit and 
inhale the breezes of liberty. I wondered, as I contemplated it, 
how editorial genius could be born and bred there, without catch- 
ing the love of freedom and emancipation. It is the early home, 
I believe, of the accomplished editor of the News-Letter. 

This morning I took stage for the metropolis — passed the 
beautiful New Market factories and flourishing village — the dull 
village of Exeter, which with all its remaining splendor looked 



EMANCIPATION IN THE WEST INDIES. 73 

to me like a " decayed gentleman," a dilapidated aristocrat. I 
thought it would be one of the last places that would hear of the 
anti-slavery revolution, or any of the great reforms of the day. 
This was a mere passing apprehension, and may be wholly a 
mistaken one. The respectable and high-born old town may be, 
at this hour, full of ultra temperance men and "technical abo- 
litionists." I could perceive, in my rapid ride through it, no 
signs of this, however, except the sign of the office of the " News- 
Letter" — indeed I did not discover that, though I respectfully 
looked for it. 

At Haverhill we took passage in the cars for the city, at half 
past one, and were scarcely seated, when the mighty propulsor, 
aggravated by the interesting conversation of some anti-slavery 
ladies, hurried us at once from the green and glowing country 
into the confused city. 



EMANCIPATION IN THE WEST INDIES. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Aug. 31, 1839.] 

Complaints are frequently made that it does not work well. 
The great proof is, that the sugar crop is lessened. And why 
should not it be lessened, if emancipation works well or works at 
all ? Before emancipation, the sugar crop was all in all. It was 
the whole crop and fruit of slavery. All was raised and made 
that could be, and as much exported and as little consumed at 
home, as could be. It was the slave's business to produce — not 
consume. Now he is emancipated ; and what follows ? Why, there 
is something else to be done in the islands, beside the sweet work 
of making sugar to sell and nourish the idle masters. The col- 
ored man is no longer doomed and devoted and sacrificed to sugar 
making. It is not now " the chief end of man" there. 

The man has something else to do. He has houses to build, 

to live in. His land to carry on, to raise provision on. He eats 

some of the sugar he makes, and does not leave it all to swell the 

crop for the market. He has to help build the school-house and 

7 



74 EMANCIPATION IN THE WEST INDIES. 

the chapel, ay, the chapel. There is great call for chapels in 
the West Indies. Chapels are looking up there. Chapels are 
rising. There is fencing to make, we take it, and premises to 
rig up and repair and make comfortable. The women too are 
leaving the Jicld, and turning their hands to house-work. They 
are quitting their sphere in the cane-field, and betaking themselves 
to domestic institutions. And the children — they are going to 
school, and instead of making sugar, making progress in the a b 
ab business. This draws off a good share of the effective force 
from the sweet business of the plantation. And afler all, only one 
twentieth of the crop is diminished, from the utmost result of the 
whole slave force of the islands, — driven at the top of their speed, 
at high-pressure whip-power. Only ^^j — such is the superior 
vigor and productiveness of free, over slave labor. The crop 
will by and by increase twenty-fold. Not all for exportation, to 
be sure — for consumption, portion of it — Aowe-consumption ; for 
there is getting to be homes in the West Indies. " Sunrise" no 
longer " brings sorrow" there. " Childhood is" no more " win- 
try" in the sunny isles of the Carribean. Other things will be 
raised there, beside sugar, which, sweet as it is, is but a poor and 
bitter staff of life. Man cannot live by sugar alone. How un- 
natural and gloomy, to have those glorious gardens doomed to 
that solitary production ! To have the patient and generous earth 
enslaved and prostituted to the unsightly and unsocial production 
of a single article only, and that not the staff of life — not bread 
— not grown to live on, but to sell, to enrich those who did not 
sweat in its production, only as they toiled with the whip, to drive 
unrequited (or thus requited) labor out of the wretched slave. 

The earth never would spontaneously give her strength to such 
an unnatural production. She wants to yield food for man and 
beast, and not mere merchandise. She wants to yield it, too, to 
free labor. She joys to have her bosom vexed with the free 
ploughshare, and shaven with the scythe and the sickle of the 
shouting husbandman, who owns her fee simple. She likes to be 
ploughed and dressed by her own lords paramount — " them and 
their heirs forever." She likes to be freehold in the hands of 
those who cultivate her a( quaiutancc and her surface. Yes, eman- 



THE AFRICAN STRANGERS. 75 

cipation works gloriously in the West Indies. A friend told us 
this morning that a gentleman in New York, recently from Ja- 
maica, complained to him that he had to leave, in consequence 
of emancipation. He was an overseer. He had to quit for want 
of employ, poor gentleman. Others had to do the same. There 
was nobody left in the island to oversee, or overlook. He brought 
an immense lot of gold and silver from the West Indies with him 
that he had earned there. The Wall street sharpers got hold of 
him, and eased him of the whole of it. It reminded us of the 
eagle plundering the fish-hawk. We are glad the money has got 
into comparatively honest hands. 



THE AFRICAN STRANGERS. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 21, 1839.] 

We are inclined to treat their case as an abolitionist, rather than 
as an inquirer into their liabilities under the rules and regulations 
of this slaveholding country, called laws. As an abolitionist we 
say, defying contradictitm, that they ought not for a moment to 
be kept under duress. The whole procedure against them, from 
king Sharka down through the dignitaries of Cuba to Andrew 
Sharka Judson, is all of a piece. It is pro-slavery violence all of 
it. This is what we take notice of We shall not trouble our- 
selves or our readers to go through the legal authorities or argu- 
ments bearing on the case of these imprisoned men. If they 
would treat them as they do white men, we don't so much care as 
to the result. Their lives are as important and no more so, than 
any other equal number of human beings of the great multi-col- 
ored and dispersed family. We look to see what hand slavery has 
in disposing of them, and to make what use we can of the whole 
occurrence against the infernal institution of slaveholding. And 
though we feel no small interest in the heroic Cingues, we don't 
claim that he have his life and his rights merely because he is a 
hero or a master spirit, but because he is a man. Had he been 
ever so cowardly or ever so imbecile in mind or spirit, we should 



76 THE AFRICAN STRANGERS. 

be equally strenuous, and more so, in his behalf; for it is the 
poor and feeble brethren of our race of whose rights we ought 
to be most tender. We are aware that a good deal of enthusiasm 
displayed by the pro-slavery press is based upon any thing rather 
than justice and a love of the right. It forgets Cingues' color, in 
admiration of his valor and his talent and personal prowess. But 
all this will evaporate by and by, when we call on it to carry out 
the feeling in behalf of three millions of Cingues' brethren and 
sisters, who are now weltering in the slough of slavery in this 
country. Why don' f this sympathy rise for them? Who shall 
kindle at the wrongs of Cingues, and sneer at the infinitely greater 
sufferings of the plantation ? If they hang Cingues, they won't 
defeat him of the chief object of his rising. He rose for liberty. 
He has got that, and if he dies, he dies a freeman. Liberty 
will be cheaply purchased by death. Death is infinitely lighter 
than slavery. He loses his country, his sweet home, his dear wife 
and children. His heart will be with them — 

" There where his rude hut by tlie" Mger " lay, 
There were his young barbarians, all at play, 
And there their" jlfric "mother, — he their sire 
Butchered to make a" Yankee "holiday." 

But they won't hang him. We are fearful they won't try him. 
The sovereignty of Cuba is making application to Van Buren to 
deliver up this stray property. See if he will incur the frown of 
the South, and hazard the bauble of the presidency by refusing. 
Try them and acquit them and treat them as innocent men, or as 
MEN, the country won't dare do, unless in this moment of excite- 
ment, and conquered for the hour by Cingues' William Tell 
prowess. How could we look the South in the face after it ; as 
Abner said to Asahel, " How then shall I hold up my face to Joab 
thy brother?" What will become of the Union? The South 
would get together in the Rotunda at Charleston, and with flam- 
ing speeches from Calhoun and Preston, dissolve it into non- 
entity. They would stare at the North so fiercely, that it would 
go into dough-faced hysterics. They won't dare acquit. And to 
condemn will be a delicate matter. Counsel are engaged who 



THE AFRICAN STRANGERS. 77 

will be compelled by their oaths to unfold the whole law, and to 
show forth their right of acquittal by our own Venetian justice, 
and the full reasons of acquittal will be recorded, and the nation 
will read it, and the blood of the murdered Cingues will cry in ears 
that were deaf as the adder to the voice of Lovejoy's. They will 
hardly dare hang. Cuba will relieve the republic. She will ask 
her imperial sister for her slaves. She will get them. The brave 
Cingues crosses the Gulf stream once more, and should God not 
open to his mighty genius some second way to victory and liberty, 
or his unwary tyrants slacken his chain, so that he might bound 
mdignantly over the vessel's side, and escape them in the depths 
of the ocean, they will revenge upon him the daring effrontery 
that raised hand against the divine prerogative of mastery. They 
won't attempt to get him to the plantation. They have no fancy 
to undertake reducing him, breaking him, making his Hannibal 
form handy in the reptile harness. No overseer would covet the 
management of him. He would as soon harness the " unicorn" 
to " harrow the valleys after" him. He would gladly swap Cingues 
for almost any pro-slavery editor in the New England states, and 
pay that boot which is due to the servility of spirit that would 
make a slave. No, they would save his more docile and submis- 
sive companions for the plantation, but they would make of the 
gallant hero a signal example of slaveholder's vengeance, which 
knows no bounds. Those laughing Afric girls would be reared 
to adorn, by and by, Don Jose Ruez's harem, that young gentle- 
man, who so interested the New London editor, and the United 
States naval officer. He would undoubtedly requite these repub- 
lican sympathisers, should they hereafter visit his Cuba plantation, 
with all sorts of hospitality . 
7* 



78 CINGUES. 



CINGUES. 
[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 28, 1839.] 

We are inclined to call the noble African by this name, al- 
though he is called by as many different titles as our republican- 
ism offers reasons for enslaving his people. We have seen a wood- 
cut representation of the royal fellow. It looks as we should 
think it would. It answers well to his lion-like character. The 
head has the towering front of Webster, and though some 
shades darker than our great countryman, we are struck, at first 
sight, with his resemblance to him. He has Webster's lion- 
aspect — his majestic, quiet, uninterested cast of expression, look- 
ing, when at rest, as if there was nobody and nothing about him 
to care about or look at. His eye is deep, heavy — the cloudy iris 
extending up behind the brow almost inexpressive, and yet as if 
volcanoes of action might be asleep behind it. It looks like the 
black sea or the ocean in a calm — an unenlightened eye, as 
Webster's would have looked, had he been bred in the desert, 
among the lions, as Cingues was, and if, instead of poring upon 
Homer and Shakspeare and Coke and the Bible, (for Webster 
read the Bible when he was young, and got his regal style there) 
it had rested, from savage boyhood, on the sands and sky of 
Africa. It looks like a wilderness — a grand, but uninhabited 
land, or, if peopled, the abode of aboriginal man. Webster's 
eye like a civilized and cultivated country — country rather than 
city — more on the whole like woods and wilderness than fields or 
villages. For, after all, nature predominates greatly in the eye 
of our majestic countryman. 

The nose and mouth of Cingues are African. W^e discover 
the expanded and powerful no.stril mentioned in the description, 
and can fancy readily its contractions and dilations, as he made 
those addresses to his countrymen, and called upon them to rush, 
with a greater than Spartan spirit, Upon the countless white peo- 
ple, who, he apprehended, would doom them to a life of slavery. 
He has none of the look of an Indian — nothing of the savage. 
It is a gentle, magnanimous, generous look, not so much of the 



CINGUES. 79 



warrior as the sage ; a sparing and not a destructive look, like 
the lion's, when unaroused by hunger or the spear of the Inints- 
man. It must have flashed terribly upon that midnight deck, 
when he was dealing with the wretched Ramonflues. 

We bid pro-slavery look upon Cingues, and behold in him the 
race wc are enslaving. He is a sample. Every Congolese and 
Mandingan is not, be sure, a Cingues. Nor was every Corsican 
a Napoleon, or every Yankee a Webster. " Giants are rare," 
said Ames, " and it is forbidden that there should be races of 
them." But call not the race zw/enor, which in now and then 
an age produces such men. 

Our shameless people h ive mide merchandise of the likeness 
of Cingues, as they have of the originals of his (and their own) 
countrymen. They had the efirontery to look him in the face long 
enough to delineate it, and at his eye long enough to copy its 
wonderful expression. 

By the way, Webster ought to come home to defend Cingues. 
He ought to have no counsel short of his twin-spirit. His de- 
fence were a nobler subject for Webster's giant intellect, than 
the Foote resolutions or Calhoun's nullification. There is, in- 
deed, no defence to make. It would give Webster occasion to 
strike at the slave trade and at our people for imprisoning and 
trying a man admitted to have risen only against the worst of 
pirates, and for more than life — for liberty, for country, and for 
home. 

Webster should vindicate him, if he must be tried. Old Mar- 
shall would be the man to try him. And after his most honorable 
acquittal and triumph, a ship should be sent to convey him to his 
country — not an American ship. They are all too near akin to 
" the low, long, black schooner." A British ship — old Nelson's 
line-of-battle, if it is yet afloat, the one he had at Trafalgar; and 
Hardy, Nelson's captain, were a worthy sailor to command it to 
Africa. He would steer more honestly than the treacherous old 
Spaniard. He would steer them toward the sunrise, by night as 
well as by day. An old British sea captain would have scorned 
to betray the noble Cingues. He would have been as faithful as 
the compass. 



80 PIERPONT EJECTED FROM THE PULPIT. 

We wait to see the fate of the African hero. We feel no anx- 
iety for him. The country can't reach him. He is above their 
reach and above death. He has conquered death. But his wife 
and his children — they who 

" Weep beside the cocoa-tree" 

And we wait to see the bearings of this providential event upon 
American slavery. 



PIERPONT EJECTED FROM THE PULPIT. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Oct. 12, 1839.] 

We bid the servile country look at it as a sign of the times. 
It will be marked by the future historian, as he tells of the re- 
formation of the country or its downfall, whichever event may be 
in the designs of Providence, an alternative puzzling to our con- 
jecture. Much is doing to save it. Pierpont has done much. 
Hollis Street pews mistake, in supposing their ejection will prevent 
his doing much more. He was before a pent moral volcano- 
ribbed in by these pew and pulpit obstructions ; — for after all his 
burning freedom, he has been impeded and embarrassed by those 
nightmares, that from their sixty-three perches, stared their tor- 
porific eyes at his dedicated station. Cast out from that house, 
he will prove an ^tna in full eruption. 

It is a threatening token, when the New England capital ban- 
ishes her Unitarian ministers from the pulpit, for being bold and 
faithful to speak of the mammoth vices of the city and the crimes 
of the day. Boston's favorite denomination banished unblush- 
ingly for preaching the truth, even in the graceful phrase and 
scholar periods of Pierpont ! See how her other steeples will 
bear it. But it is again an encouraging token, that a preacher 
of this popular persuasion there should have the boldness and 
fidelity to incur ejection in such a behalf It shows one tenth at 
least, in the haughty city, of the salt, that may be required to 
save it. 



PIERPONT EJECTED FROM THE PULPIT. 81 

We do not sympathize in the distinguishing doctrines of this 
ingenuous and most estimable minister. We have lamented that 
his fine eye should, as it has seemed to us, overlook the myste- 
rious and wondrous humiliation of the eternal God, condescend- 
ing to the death of the cross, that man, otherioise incapable of 
reconciliation to him, might have everlasting life, while his rec- 
titude of principle, conscientiousness of life and disinterested 
boldness for humanity, have put to shame the multitudes of the 
northern pulpit, who, with a better profession, as we deem it, 
have rested on that profession — hung upon it, or skulked behind 
it, to avoid obedience to him they professed to believe. Pro- 
fessing a better Savior, they have followed him — if at all — afar 
off, like Peter at the betrayal ; and if they have not betrayed, 
have at least denied him, in the persons of " the least of these 
his brethren." We would affectionately hope that our persecuted 
brother may take occasion from this instance of suffering for 
truth and duty, solemnly and prayerfully to review his faith, and 
to lay his heart open, deeper and deeper, to the influences of the 
Holy Spirit — that He would reveal to him, in the light He will 
be seen in hereafter and forever — that Savior, in whose cause he 
so honorably suffers, amid his faithless and forsaking disciples. 
We speak this in no sectarian mood or spirit. 

We ask the friends of religious liberty to read the manly letter 
of the banished HoUis street minister. We would commend it 
to the pondering attention of the pulpit, especially of that portion 
of it, which does not deem it expedient lo run counter to the hu- 
mors and caprices of parish wealth and influence. " It will never 

do," says the faithful Rev. Mr. Blank, " for ministers to go 

faster than the wishes of their people." Their people they are 
rightly called — and they are kept theirs, by humoring their un- 
godly prejudices and winking at their respectable iniquities. Thus 
are very many ministers the slaves and panders of their parishes, 
while they are at the same time (and by this means) their tyrants. 
They lord it over the superstition of their congregations, and 
trample on whatever of spiritual independence they descry amid 
the general vassalage, — all the while watching the current of 
popular caprice, with the assiduity of that uncompromising watch- 



THE NORTH STAR. 



mail, which observes the wind at the top of their steeples. Not 
so John Pierpont. And for this, " property and standing" has 
ejected him from the pulpit. We wait to see what community 
says to it, on whose bosom he is cast. The press — will it depre- 
cate proscription — in the abstract — and then regret Mr. Pierpont's 
imprudence in thus awakening it ? And tlie Winslow pulpits — 
we are curious to hear their response to this summons of the 
Hollis street " brot'ierhood." The inrlepcndcnce and the fidel- 
ity of the pulpit are here signally struck down ! Let us see if it 
will be answered by a general quivering and succumbing — by fresh 
servility to the mob and heightened insolence to the abolitionists. 
We congratulate Mr. Pierpont on his distinguished victory. He 
lias come off witii signal honor. We expect henceforth double 
portion of the outpouring of his flaming genius for humanity 
and for God. Let the pro-slavery, wine-bibbing, grog-stimula- 
ting, time-serving, mob-instigating, man-crushing and God-defying 
world, have no^o no quarter at the hands of his lightning muse- 
now is the hour. " I^elix opportunitate" — not "^ mortis" — for it 
is victory — happy in this occasion of deliverance from a base- 
spirited and profligate pew-tyranny. 



THE NORTH STAR. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Dec. 1, 1839.] 

John Pierpont has turned all free eyes to this glorious little 
arctic luminary, which is henceforward to be the queen of the 
night firmament. His " Fugitive's Slave's Apostrophe" to it — 
published in our week before last — (in our absence, or we should 
have attempted an apostrophe to that,) seems to us a star in the 
sky of poetry, that shall be gazed at as long as the language it is 
clothed in endures, and while that cold and steadfast orb shall 
twinkle in the polar heavens to guide the sailor on the untracked 
deep ; and long, long after it shall have ceased to be the magnet 
of the fugitive from southern bondage, to attract and direct him 
through these free states to the land of liberty. 



THE NORTH STAR. 83 

" Star of the North" — O, it warms the true anti-slavery heart 
to look at it, now, of a clear December's night. " Sun of the 
sleepless" it is — and as it is followed by the pilgrim for liberty, 
so it will be watched by the lovers of the muse, with a dearer 
interest than ever Chaldean shepherd gazed at the spangled fir- 
mament. 

We cannot read this glorious "Apostrophe" without tears of 
admiration and wonder, — no more at the beauty of the thought 
and the starry magnificence of the numbers, than at the sublime 
appreciation it displays of the " fugitive's" manhood — hunted by 
the man-robber of the South and his fellow-hounds ; — while his 
mouth is thus filled with deathless poetry. We mark him hence- 
forth as a poet, as well as " a man and a brother." It is no fic- 
tion, though it be poetry, that the bard here sets forth. Our 
fuo-itive brother feels it all as he flies. His manhood awakens 
as he speeds his way, and the star he follows fills his soul with 
hope and inspiration. How keenly his dark vision scans the 
northern firmament for its evening appearance ! How impatiently 
he watches till God lights his blessed lamp, and hangs it in his 
northward way ! With what anxiety he witnesses the interven- 
mg float of the " fleecy drapery of the sky !" He scrutinizes 
the shrouded pole till it shines again. — There it is yet ! He 
blesses God and " presses on ;" his eagerness and his aspirations 
scarcely surpassed, in holy sublimity, by those of the men who 
followed the star of Bethlehem. He goes for liberty — human 
LIBERTY, a boon of inestimable preciousness. Men have learned 
here to undervalue it. He flees like Pilgrim — from the city of 
Destruction. 

How inexpressibly tender the fugitive's benediction for the 
gentle star-beam, that rests upon the spring where he stoops to 
drink, and where he reposes at approach of day ; — and who can 
hear, without shrinking and thrilling with cold fear, 

" In the dark top of southern pines 
I nestled when the driver's horn," &c. 

But we can't review. It is above our province. We can't stay 
for it, any more than can our panting brother. We and he are 



84 THE MONTHLY MISCELLANY. 

on the way to liberty. We thank the noble bard in behalf of our 
flying brother and of our cause. We trust the time will come 
he need not fly. The Apostrophe is a star to guide men to our 
ciuse. It sheds lustre upon it in the eyes of all lovers of genius. 
Men cannot scorn the enterprise that enlists such talent. It will 
attract eyes not to be attracted by the flame of liberty. 

But, O ! shame to New England, that the fugitive cannot rest 
amid all her hills ! that he must be fugitive still — along her bold 
streams ! There is no rest for his tired foot in all her borders. 
The star of liberty rests not over the Pilgrim States. The ^'wise 
men" who follow it, do not find it " coming and standing over us." 
Our mountain region, the very home and haunt for freedom — it 
is only the highway to liberty — and the indignant spirit, as it 
traverses it in quest of disenthralment, must say of it, as the 
surly Johnson did, when he said of Scottish prospects, that " the 
only fine one was the high road that led to England." Our only 
natural fine prospect is that of the high road to Canada and liberty. 



THE MONTHLY MISCELLANY. 
[From the Herald of Freedom of Dec. 14, 1839.] 

The following article we take from " The Monthly Miscel- 
lany," &c. — a highly respectable periodical, published at Boston. 
Its contributors are among the most accomplished writers of the 
country. We publish the article and mention the source of it, 
as a mark of great change in public opinion in the community ; 
such periodicals not having deigned, until recently, to admit such 
vulgar and fanatical topics to their graceful pages. The able 
reviewer is shocked at the atrocities developed by " Slavery as it 
is." But why shocked ? Was he not aware of the existence of 
SLAVERY in the land, and is he surprised that it should bring forth 
such fruits? To be sure the details, in this terrible book, are 
shocking. They are enough to chill humanity's blood and stop 
its pulse — to make its eyes start from their spheres, and its com- 
bined locks to rear themselves on end — separate and rigid with 



THE MONTHLY MISCELLANY. 85 

horror. But is it surprising 1 Was it not to be expected of sucli 
a relation, between men, as that of master and slave, — owner and 
chattel ! Is any one so utterly unaware of human nature, as to 
think human treatment — not to say humane — could be bestowed 
upon a brute ! — Terrible developments, forsooth. Well, the aboli- 
tionists have been holding up to community, these eight years, the 
creature itself — in its essential, vital monstrosity. They dragged 
it forth on to the public arena, and stretched it out under gaze of 
the nation in all its scaly deformity, its hydra hideousness. The 
nation were excited — but it was at the abolitionists, not at the 
dragon. They were mad at the sight — but not mad at slavery. 
They were mad with the abolitionists, and fell upon them with 
mobocratic fury. And the genteel writers of the day were among 
those who mstigated the mob. They were annoyed, offended, 
disgusted. They tossed their scholastic noses on high, and gave 
vent, in the ears of " popular sentiment," to their dainty and 
lettered indignation. Well, such is human nature, and such has 
been human history. Let it all pass for the present. If repented 
of, all is pardonable — and " late" repentance is " better than 
never." 

But Mr. Weld's book, terrible and faithful though it be, is 
wrongly titled. It is niit slavery as it is. Slavery as it is, 
cannot be written in an earthly book. The demon relation is 
indescribable, unutterable, inconceivable. There are no words 
formed for it. Words are for human occasion, and for the use 
of human nature ; and nature hath no occasion for a slavery 
vocabulary. The delineator of slavery must consult the lexi- 
cography of hell. He must learn the dialect of the bottomless 
pit. Weld can talk the strongest human language. But he has 
attempted a work that transcends his and human power. He 
has examined a " thousand witnesses." They tell all they know 
relative to the cause for which they are summoned. But inter- 
rogate them as to slavery as it is, and they must utter only 
their non mi ricordo, or stand mute. They may tell of some of 
its external incidents. They can testify of the whippings and 
ptarvings — the driving and the lacerations — the maimings, and 
the " deaths by modcrofi correction^' — the huntings with dog and 
8 



QQ THE MONTHLY MISCELLANY. 

gun — the separations — the snappmg asunder of the strong heart- 
strings and all the gentle et ceteras of the domestic institution. 
But are these slavery? Do these begin to disclose it? Do 
they give a hint at it ? Do they disclose its title-page, or even 
its outside lettering ? No — no — no. They don't. They can't. 
Milton was a bold man. He ventured on things " unattempted 
in prose or rhyme." He descended in imagination to the nether 
hell. But he did not essay the more daring conception to bring 
hell up, and translate it to the earth and the air. Hell above 
ground is slavery as it is. This is our description of slavery. 
We leave it at this. No slave, escaped from it, will say we have 
exaggerated, or will ask us to attempt details. 

Weld's testimony may scare away some from their anti-aboli- 
tionism ; but it makes no genuine anti-slavery men. It makes 
no such abolitionists as the mighty author. He became one be- 
fore he saw his book. So did all abolitionists. What made Gar- 
rison an anti-slavery man ? Slavery. The word — the idea, the 
relation — the abstraction. Not " slavery in the abstract" — had 
it continued abstract. Had slavery existed only in the abstract, 
he had remained an ab( litionist in the abstract. But slavery 
existed in the application, and he therefore became an abolition- 
ist in the application. He shouted his war cry at first idea of 
the dreadful wrong. Weld heard it and answered amid the depths 
of Ohio. The Liberator uttered his voice on the wild margin 
of the Atlantic. They heard him on the western rivers and the 
utmost lakes. 

" The testimony of a thousand witnesses" is important to our 
cause. It will affect minds that higher considerations cannot 
reach. It helps overthrow slavery — though it may make no genu- 
ine abolitionists. It is that sort of testimony that men seek to 
help them in their unbelief It is the kind of evidence the rich 
man in hell wanted Abraham to send to the earth to convince his 
five brethren, and keep them from that place of torment. It is 
the preaching of unbelief It is not Moses and the prophets. 
Those the land has heard and disregarded. Neither will they 
believe, though a thousand witnesses come up and tell theii 
ghastly story from the church-yard of the South. 



THE FIFTEEN-GALLON LAW. 87 

That our brother man was enslaved, was enough for us to hear. 
We did not care whether he was overworked or under — full fed 
or scantily — clad or naked — whipped or unwhipped. He was a 
SLAVE. He was imbruted, and we cared not whether he was a 
hungry dog or a surfeited one — as an ox, whether his neck was 
worn with the yoke or his hide perforated with the goad, — or 
whether, as a horse or an ass, his sides were waled with the cart 
whip or cut up with the spur. Finding him a brute, we took it 
for granted he had brute treatment, aggravated by the circum- 
stance that he could provoke and be hated, as quadruped brutality 
could not. 

The remarks of the reviewer on public opinion are able and 
just. Will he join the anti-slavery ranks, and help revolutionize 
that opinion 1 or will he content himself with writing a handsome 
article on our enterprise, and leave it to struggle on as it has 
done? We like his opinion that "excision" is the only remedy 
for slavery ; but we marvel that he could have supposed it a tole- 
rable evil, before he read of the lightest of its inflictions, in 
" Slavery as it is." 



THE FIFTEEN-GALLON LAW. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Dec. 21, 1839.] 

We are glad that Massachusetts people are getting satisfied 
that legislation is no proper measure for the promotion of a moral 
enterprise. The anti-slavery measure is moral agitation — by free 
discussion. The pro-slavery measure is the legislature. It is as 
good a measure in one spiritual enterprise as another — as good 
to regulate the belief, as the conduct of men. Mankind were 
not made to improve under its discipline. 

They complain of the fifteen-gallon law in Massachusetts, be- 
cause it has revolutionized the parties. Mr. Buckingham is in a 
rage with it, because of its impolicy, and because it has shaken 
Governor Everett in his gubernatorial shoes. We detest legisla- 
lative interference, because it promotes drunkenness. We think 



88 THE FIFTEEN-GALLON LAW. 

the election of Gov. Everett of far minor importance to the intox- 
ication of one man — the most abandoned wretch in the by-places 
of the capital. For one man to get drunk, whoever he be, is of 
more mischievous importance than a political revolution that 
should not only defeat the Reverend Mr. Everett of one year's 
occupancy of " Herod's judgment-seat," but should leave the 
tetrarchy of Massachusetts unoccupied for twenty years to come. 
Indeed, we think it would be a great benefit to the self-governed 
people of the Commonwealth to go ungoverned — except by them- 
selves — for that term of time to come. We could get along 
l)retty well so in New Hampshire, were it not that the crow and 
militia laws need continual modification ; and they are of no 
force over crows or militia officers, without approval of a gov- 
ernor. 

Some of our temperance friends are in love with legislative 
reform in this state, in this behalf We are decidedly opposed 
to it. It is an illegitimate mode of reform, and is, we believe, 
resorted to by those clergymen and politicians, and other great 
men, who are afraid of the effect of moral agitation upon their 
influential positions in community. We say, let every man sell 
as much rum and drink as much rum as he chooses, ybr all legis- 
lation. If we can't stop drunkenness without the paltry aid of 
(Hir state house, let it go on. It is a less evil than sumptuary 
legislation, — and a legislative reformation would be good for 
nothing, if it could be effected. It would be a totally unprinci- 
])led reformation. And as much as we loathe drunkenness, we 
had as lief witness any bar-room scene we ever saw, as some 
scenes enacted at our stone state house. Why, we have to keep 
the legislature itself, sober, in the very session time, by influence 
of the Temperance society. Stop that influence, and the legis- 
lative session would be a time of general drunkenness, gambling 
and debauchery, wherever the legislature should hold its sittings. 
And is the country to look to legislation for the preservation of 
its morals ! We would as soon look to the general muster, as 
the general court. We say this with all deference to our public 
servants, as they call themselves when they want our votes. 



ANTI-SLAVERY. 89 



ANTI-SLAVERY. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Jan. 18, 1840.] 

This i.? our magnificent enterprise — our grand and glorious 
purpose of philanthropy. We labor to effect it by the power of 
truth, by admonition, by warning, by solemn appeal to the heart 
and conscience of this nation. 

We have nothing to say, in this enterprise, to the slave. He 
is no party to his own enslavement — he is to be none to his disen- 
thralment. We have nothing to say to the South. The real 
holder of the slave is not there. He is in the North — the free 
North, the anti-slavery North ! The South have not the poicer to 
hold the slave. It is the character of the nation, that binds and 
holds him down in bondage. If nothing but the puny force of 
the South lay upon him, he would heave it off from his breast with 
swift and bloody insurrection. It is not the driver's whip that 
rules the hundred sturdy and sullen slaves of the cotton field, and 
humbles them to his single control. It is not the mastery, at 
whose beck that whip is wielded, for that is feeble, enervated and 
impotent. It is not the indolent and vicious population of the 
South, who claim to own these people, that has strength of pow-er 
to keep them in their chains. But it is the whole country. It is 
the republic, at whose behest the enchained millions of the land 
lie fettered. And the efficient force of that republic is north of 
slavery's Dixon line. Slavery is then a northern institution, and 
not a southern. The North continues to tolerate it at the national 
capital. The North refuses to interdict the inter-state home trade 
in slaves. The North, by its representative majority, cherishes 
the system in the territory of Florida. The South could neither 
maintain nor suppress slavery, or the trade in either of these. 
She has not the power, and the North has not the icill. We re- 
mind the anti-slavery North that by a northern majority does 
slavery live at the District of Columbia — a majority oi votes, and 
by a majority of northern hearts and voices, does it live through^ 
out the South. 

It is not a political revolution, that we have to work out. This 
8* 



90 ANTI-SLAVERY. 



is not the revolution needed. No such would abolish slavery. 
The country would not be prepared by it for the slave's liberty. 
The best and utmost that political movement — that constitutions, 
enactments and decisions could effect for the slave, is to transmute 
him into that anomaly in a christia?i republic, called a " free 
nigger." New Hampshire has thus transmuted him by the magic 
force of its politics. What is the liberty of a New Hampshire 
emancipated colored man ? It barely qualifies him to pass muster 
as a candidate for the mercy of the Colonization society. All 
that constitution and law have done for him is to fit him for exam- 
ination for the high school at Liberia. They have fitted him for 
re-transportation — as representative of his kidnapped ancestry, — 
by a sort o^ return slave-trade, and back-track " middle passage," 
to the forlorn and melancholy coast of Africa. 

Law and constitution have elevated him to the " impossibility 
of ever rising in this countri/" to the water level of humanity, 

to such a high pitch of infinite debasement, that Christianity 

(so says colonization) can never reach him — only to fish him up 
for market on the desolate Slave coast. 

Ohio has abolished slavery by law and constitution. Yet Ohio 
is the land of the black law, and her anti-slavery executive casts 
her Mahan bound hand and foot into the fiery furnace of Ken- 
tucky. Connecticut has undergone a legal abolition — for proof, 
behold her black act and her demolished Canterbury academy. 
New York has abolished slavery by late ; yet it is as much as a 
colored man's life is worth to live in her cities, and an abolitionist 
has fared there little better than he. Philadelphia is the capital city 
of a constitutional anti-slavery state. The skeleton of Pennsyl- 
vania hall, " fire-stained" and mob-scathed, looms up in its might, 
a monument of the omnipotency of her idol slavery. Illinois is 
a legally free state. But slavery boldly shot down, before her 
face and eyes, freedom of speech and liberty of the press. 
Slavery murdered both with wanton impunity and exultation in 
the streets of Alton. New Hampshire is a tremendously free 
state. Slavery has been abolished by the very genius and spirit 
of our institutions. Yet they burnt liberty of speech in effi- 
gy, in her state-house yard, on a September night, in 0:5^1835 ! 



THE WORLDS COIMVENTION. 91 

and a school, erected to liberty, in the northern county of Graf- 
ton, was brutally hauled off from its foundations by the public 
sentiment of the county. But we will not enlarge. Slavery has 
been legally abolished in half the states of the Union, and the 
best they can do for the fugitive slave is to give him race ground 
to Canada before the southern bloodhound, and for the freed man 
of color is to let in upon him the gray hounds of Colonization. 
Surely, if " slavery be the creature of law," that emancipation 
which is its creature, is but a sorry consolation to the subject 
of it. 



THE WORLD'S CONVENTION. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of April 4, 1840.] 

It is impossible for us to tell — or conceive — the immeasurable 
importance of this contemplated meeting at London. We fear 
American abolitionists are not sufficiently interested in our coun- 
try's being represented there. The philanthropists of England 
are expecting us in great force. John Scoble said the other day, 
at Glasgow, there would be one hundred delegates from the Uni- 
ted States. There ought to be five hundred ! We fear there 
will not be fifty. We are apprehensive New Hampshire will not 
be represented there at all. We have not heard from all the 
appointed delegates ; but those whose pecuniary means would 
enable them to go, will have concerns at home, we fear, that will 
render their going inconvenient. Money is scarce, and some 
of us cannot obtain it or afford to spare it from the support of 
numerous and helpless families. But that would not hinder the 
republic of the world being fully represented there. There is 
money enough, but not interest enough felt by the christian pro- 
fession of the land. Missionaries can be fitted out and sustained, 
to carry religion's rush-light to make pagan " darkness visible" 
on the other side of the globe. But the World's Convention, 
which if followed up, (as it will be,) will soon open the way to 
evangelizing the remotest corners of the earth, and superseding 



«)•> THK WORLD'S CONVENTION. 

all necessity of missionary etfort, such as now is made, scarcely 
attracts tlic snccrinir notice of church or state amon<T us. 

The meeting will be the most important the earth has known. 
The world never before thought of holding a meeting for such 
(til object. It has never before entertained the idea of a. friendly 
meeting. There w.is a Holy Alliance once marched through Lon- 
don after fife and drum, under an escort of Cossacks from the 
l>anks of the Don. They met then not to abolish human slavery, 
but to crush mankind under the iron hoof of military despotism — 
to fix, as Daniel Webster said, a horizontal line between the 
upper and under strata of human society. The World's Conven- 
tion is not like that. It meets together, under flag of truce, 
preliminary to universal and everlasting peace and brotherhood. 
It is the meeting of the World's committee of arrangements, — 
j)rej)aratory to the congregation of the whole human family — to 
i)e gathered again before long, it is hoped, under the eld family 
roof, after thousands of years of estrangement and wide-dispersed 
separation. How sublime will be the greeting of these brethren ! 
The en<ls of the earth meet and shake hands with each other — 
yea, oiiibraee and kiss each other. It will not be a national meet- 
ing — nationality will not be represented or recognized. It will 
1)0 a meeting of mankind, and they will discover in each other 
convincing tokens of their long-lost fraternity and kindred. It 
will be Humanity's first conference. All the members of the 
human family will be inquired after and hunted up, — however 
remote, — and measures instituted for their relief and salvation. 
None will be forgotten, in whatever longitude or wherever strayed 
or lost between the utmost poles and "earth's central line" — of 
whatever language, complexion or clime. It will be a landmark, 
(his " World's Convention," for the admiring retrospection of all 
future history, — the earth's J?r5< meeting — but not its last. Man- 
kind will again meet — and again. Ere long they will hold their 
antninl meetings — and when some swifter agency than the steam 
— (for God will smile on human invention and multiply it infi- 
nitely, when it shall labor to ends like this) — shall circumambulate 
the globe, in briefer space than the ocean's steamer now per- 
forms the semi-monthly trips of the Atlantic — who knows but 



LETTER FROiM EDINBURGH. 93 

they will come together from its utmost parts, many times ofiener 
than the shadowy little planet itself can measure its circuit about 
the sun ! It may be so. It will be so. — Stranger things happen 
every year. 

Shall New England be represented from all her states ? Do the 
people appreciate the mighty importance of the meeting ? It will 
teach men that there is no such thing as foreigner on the earth, 
and that there need be no such thing as enemy or stranger. 
" The World's Anti-Slavery Society" will be formed — at " The 
World's Convention." Not " The British and Foreign" — not 
" The American" — not the Old World or the New — the Eastern 
Hemisphere or the Western — but the World. And the eradica- 
tion of war from the earth — the restoration of universal peace — 
the abolition of human slavery — are events no more improbable 
as its results, than West India emancipation was seven years 
ago, or two thousand anti-slavery societies in the United States 
were eight years ago, when twelve anti-slavery disciples consti- 
tuted the entire abolitionism of America. It may be our phan- 
tasy — but to our vision wondrous results are to flow directly and 
suddenly from this unostentatious meeting. 



LETTER FROM EDINBURGH. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Aug. 13, 1840.] 

Edinburgh, July 22, 1840. 
Dear Brother Pillsbury, — I snatch a pen and a moment 

to send a flying line to you and the beloved abolitionists of New 
Hampshire from this glorious capital of Northern Britain. I write 
amid stirring objects — at the foot of " Arthur's Seat" and the 
famous " Salisbury Crags," — in this queen of cities, in the land 
of Bruce and of Wallace and of Burns ; and it is no fidling olT 
of circumstance to say further, that I am writing with George 
Thompson's pen, in his anti-slavery study, — the scene of his 
mighty preparations, which have shaken this island with an elo- 



94 LETTER FROM EDINBURGH 

quence unsurpassed by any in the days of its Sheridans — its 
Chathams — its Broughams — or O'Connells. I wish our pro- 
slavery mobocrats could see the " Fugitive from justice" here at 
home, and above all, witness the tempest of applauding that greets 
him as he enters the great meetings in England and Scotland. 

But I must be brief. I congratulate you and Liberty, on 
your glorious victory of the 3c? of June. I was in the battle 
•with you in spirit, though in body becalmed on the glassy ocean. 
It was a victory more glorious than the " seventeenth of June," 
of our bloody old revolution, — or than Bannockburn even, when 
Bruce sent King Edward home again to England, when he came 
down to these glens and mountains, to " new organize" Scottish 
independence. I knew it must so turn out, if the abolitionism 
of the Granite commonwealth rallied to the rescue. You have 
conquered, and the cause is safe. I have no fears for the cause 
since New Hampshire has gone right. As goes Netv Hampshire, 
so goes the land ! Our little mountain state is the Scotland of 
the Union — and among her hill-tops gush in thousand springs 
the fountains of our national spirit and opinion. Thank Heaven, 
they gush free. You have unmasked " New Organization," and 
it has seceded. It is well it has, since it must be so. Let it set 
up a press now, and then we will have the pro-slavery of the North 
openly against us in the field. I hope our brother Curtis will 
hoist his sheet to the wind. See how it will stand a gale from 
< lie White hills. Free discussion is all that truth wants. A free 
and fair field — and let the right prevail. 

New Organization is not confined to the other side of the wa- 
ter. It is rife and in full experiment here. It has a snug abode 
in London. We found it under way in the substitute meetinw 
for our glorious anticipated " World's Convention." That con- 
vention we did not find, — but instead thereof a respectable little 
conference of invited guests of a London committee. I was sent 
to no such, and did not present my credentials or go within its 
enclosures. I told the managers of it that American abolitionists 
did not send delegates across the ocean to wait on London com- 
mittees, or any other assemblages short of the whole human bro- 
therhood, in convention gathered, without distinction of sect or 



LETTER FROM EDINBURGH. 95 

sex or color or clime. They said, as I understood, that they had 
not any idea of a World's Convention, — that it was but " a poetical 
flourish of Friend Whittier." They said, in relation to one fea- 
ture of the meeting, that women were not admissible because of 
the delicacy of her sex. Yet we saw women all the way through 
England, toiling in the hay-field and the hoe-field, and even ham- 
mering stone for macadamizing the road along the great high- 
ways. She was not " out of her delicate sphere" in any of these 
" domestic avocations," — no — nor in spreading manure to ferti- 
lize the soil of merry England. 

More of this, should I reach home. The conference, though 
by no means what it ought to have been, or at all like a " World's 
Convention," was still an important meeting, and passed some 
valuable resolutions — and good will follow it. *' The World's 
Convention," however, must be holden in a freer land than old 
England — it must be holden in Ntw England. 

I see my name at the head of the " Anti-Slavery Standard." 
I would just say that I am not responsible for that, beyond what 
was said in your presence. All will be right, I think, when we 
reach our beloved native shores. I only wish to say, meanwhile, 
to you and the beloved abolitionists of New Hampshire, that my 
heart is with them, and there I desire my lot to be. New Hamp- 
shire — my dear native, mountain land — 

"Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see, 
My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee." 

I have only time to say that our faithful brother Garrison is 
received with enthusiasm wherever we go; and that George 
Thompson is as true to Old Organization as he was when he 
sounded his bugle amid the blasts of New England and New 
York mobocracy, in the memorable year of '35. 

Your brother, N. P. ROGERS. 



96 TO THE ABOLITIONISTS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 
TO THE ABOLITIONISTS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Aug. 28, 1840.] 

Beloved Friends and Felloic-Lahorers in the struggling — 
triumphing — cause of Humanity. 

With joyous, heart-felt emotions, I find myself once more 
among you. Heart and spirit expand within me as I stand again 
on the free and favored soil of New Hampshire. With gratitude 
to our Father in heaven, I would humbly acknowledge his mer- 
ciful preservations on my long and dangerous journey, and his 
restoration of me to friends, home, and the anti-slavery field, from 
the tedium and perils of the ocean and from the subject regions 
that lie beyond it. I thank his tender mercy that, returning 
from beyond the sea, which cut me off from them for a period, 
which, however swiftly it may have lapsed to you, amid the joys 
of HOME, seemed long to me, — I find no face missing from the 
clear circle I had left behind me. And I would be especially 
grateful that God has enabled me to do something in my absence 
for the great and glorious cause on which you sent me — some- 
thing beyond my most sanguine expectations. Although disap- 
))ointed of the form under which I expected to labor and to wit- 
ness the labors of others who should be mighty for bleeding 
Immanity, I believe I have been instrumental of doing more, 
and that more has been done for truth and liberty, than could 
have been achieved by the grandest convention that could have 
been tolerated in th? British islands. " Man deviseth his way, 
but the Lord directeth his steps." The great cause of God and 
humanity has been signally advanced in England by a blind at- 
tempt of his enemies to baffle and defeat it. 

1 rejoice in the wondrous prosperity God has vouchsafed the 
cause here. I find it standing high on the vantage ground of 
victorious truth. New Hampshire abolitionism has, under God, 
signally triumphed, and triumphed for the whole land. The eyes 
of the country were on you — anxiously watching your struggle. 
The hopes and fears of friend and enemy were every where widely 
awaked. You were faithful, and have triumphed. Thanks to him 



TO THE ABOLITIONISTS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 97 

alone who was on our side, when men rose up against us. Let 
us humble ourselves in view of this interposition — and while we 
esteem our own efforts as nothing, and our own righteousness as 
filthy rags, let us now and henceforth put unwavering trust in 
God, that he will always sustain us in every conflict for his truth, 
and give us the victory over all its enemies. 

The foes of our enterprise are at length embodied in the open 
field. At this I rejoice. I exult to find them coming out and 
mustering openly, and in our neighborhood. They are gathering 
about our encampment as if they regarded it the post of import 
ance on the anti-slavery field. They regard it rightly. I thank 
them for the estimate they put upon our labors and our success. 
Let them come — more and more of them. It is what we have all 
ardently desired. We will meet them under God, and they will 
perish, though they were of Goliath stature and their spear staves 
like the weaver's beam and their Philistine foreheads of triple 
brass. No front is thick enough to stand proof against the sling- 
stones of the truth of God, 

I can breathe freely again in the atmosphere of liberty — for, my 
brethren and friends, with all our pro-slavery it is an atmosphere 
of liberty. Here is freedom, compared to the restrictive and 
suffocating subjection, that broods upon the beauteous face of 
" merry England," and haunts even the glens and mountains of 
gallant Scotland. For Scotland herself is not free. She does 
not dream of New England liberty. Remote as she stands from 
tyrant London, up among the northern mists, and prompted per- 
petually as she is to freedom by her glorious scenery and her 
stirring associations, old Caledonia is not free. She is subject. 
Her gallant people stand aloof from the head-quarters of royalty 
and regal aristocracy, and from that sterner, kindred despotism, 
the hierarchy of England ; — from the Windsor Castles and the 
Westminster Abbeys — the St. Paul's Cathedrals and the old Tow- 
ers of London, the common ally and guardian of them all — those 
palaces, where kings tread by divine right on the necks of their 
subject brethren, and the priesthood cloaks the despotism with the 
gorgeous mantle of old superstition — and where the mounted 
cannon gapes hollow from their high battlements down upon the 
9 



98 TO THE ABOLITIONISTS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 

defenceless people as the grand sanction of them all, — for instead 
of love to God or man, the gunpowder and the bayonet are the 
grand sanction of British church and state. The " stay and 
staff" of both is stowed away in that ugly old Tower, in the 
shape of a hundred thousand glittering muskets and a quarter of 
a million sabres. O, the beautiful array of their instruments of 
death! — "Let us write peace on earth and good will to 
MEN on ' the outer wall !' " cried Garrison, as we gazed on the 
gloomy old receptacle, as we left it. O, the heavenly panoply 
there arrayed by the religion and government of England, to 
ir.aiutain their wholesome supremacy over a prostrate people ! 
One can't doubt, as he beholds their countless multitude and hor- 
rent display, that church and state are safe in England. 

Scotland, though remote from all these, is not free. She is in 
subject union. The Scottish lion sleeps on Arthur's seat, and 
brave old Scotland is part and parcel of Great Britain, and her 
gallant people are British subjects. They will not be subjects 
always. Great and free spirits are there ; men and women fit 
this hour for freedom's peaceful martyrdom. The Murrays — 
the Smeales — the Handersons — the Brewsters, and the Thomp- 
sons — for George Thompson dwells in Scotland. He could not 
breathe in London. But Thoinipson, even in Edinburgh, is by 
position a subject. Daring as the lion, when he ranged our free 
sliores and braved our roused mobocracy to the beard, his spirit is 
mitigated and subdued on the subject island, like the forest king 
in the Tower. O, that he were here among us again ! — He longs 
to be here. His heart droops in Britain. He sighs for the free 
conflict for liberty here. But for his young family, he would 
have accompanied us back. Church and state both could not 
now drive him out from us again, as a " felon," or a " fugitive 
from justice." He is waging a conflict for British India. " New 
Organization" scowls upon him from haughty London, in the 
form of " The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Committee." 
London is the fit head-quarters for that committee. It is the 
capital of the World's Despotism. There is not such a tyranny 
on earth as England's. Despotism shows darker and grosser per- 
haps on the continent and in the far East — but in accomplished, 



TO THE ABOLITIONISTS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 99 

regulated and christendom-like tyranny — in settled, premeditated 
hostility to human liberty, England no doubt stands pre-eminent 
among the nations, — and London is its capital. Her anti-slavery, 
in the great mass of it, partakes of this character. It is more 
despotic as well as more servile than our republican pro-slavery. 
I had greatly misapprehended its character. Its genuineness may 
be judged of by the fact, that politic statesmen affect to be in- 
terested in it, and his royal highness the Duke of Sussex, and 
his serene and mighty highness Prince Albert preside at its great 
meetings — while its managers look upon George Thompson with 
jealousy and displeasure. What would Prince Albert say to 
American anti-slavery? I would sooner trust our enterprise in 
the hands of our pro-slavery mob, than with the committee of the 
British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. They don't begin to 
be abolitionists. They would not think of joining our new or- 
ganization even. They would be more likely to join the Colon- 
ization society — although they have no prejudice against color. 
And their exemption from this is accidental with them. They 
despi.^e low condition as much as we do color. They have had 
no occasion to despise color. British slavery has been carried 
on in the remote West Indies, and no emancipated colored peo- 
ple have strayed up to the British islands from the South. Com- 
mon British abolitionism can thrust woman out of the anti-slavery 
conference. Even their Quakers did this, in defiance of their 
own principles and usages. They can deny the competency of 
woman to think and act among men on the great subject of hu- 
manity, while they foist an inexperienced girl on to the throne 
of England, surrounded there by a crowd of old war bruisers by 
land and sea, and old hackneyed, heartless statesmen ; give her 
command of the ship of state and the steering of the church, 
archbishops and all — and to crown her delicate and becoming 
station, make her commander-in-chief of their standing army, 
and grand admiral of the 'British navy — all this British anti- 
slavery can do gravely and in earnest. They are great sticklers 
for female delicacy. They won't allow an opinion or a vote to 
come between the wind and woman's nobility. But it will load 
her shoulder with the brick-layer's hod — make her hammer stone 



100 TO THE ABOLITIONISTS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 

by the road side to mend ihe highways — hoe potatoes, pitch hay, 
and spread manure among the subject male laborers in the field 
of the nobility — all this with proper regard to female delicacy, 
and without violation of " British usage." I witnessed her in 
these and many other positions equally lady-like. They have no 
freedom in Britain — and how can they have aiUi-slavery there ? 
I speak it with glorious exceptions. The very face of the ground 
there, with all its beauty and fertility, looks subject and shackled. 
It looks as if serfs had tilled it with involuntary labor. The 
Briton will talk vehemently for liberty and rights, and he can 
afford to, — for he means nothing by it, and pov.er knows that he 
means nothing. He connects no action with his talk. If he is 
rash enough to talk significantly, he goes into the Tower, or York 
Castle, to repent of his temerity at his leisure. lie is very ve- 
hement in his invective — but his impetuosity, like his own watch 
dog's, has a chain to limit it. He will pour out copious and vio- 
lent epithets, so long as he will take it out in epithets. He may 
go where he pleases, but a uniformed police man constantly 
dogs his footsteps, or one of their bear-skin headed, — i«rc-kneed, 
hateful military. The whole citizenship — or rather subjectship — 
of the country is besprinkled with red coats, whom hungry labor 
has to maintain in setting limits to its own freedom. Over all 
the sweet hedge-rows peep the ugly bayonets, and British liberty 
walks perpetually under guard, subject and subjugated ; and it 
was most mortifying to me that some of our new-organized re- 
publicanism crept over the water the other day, and did it hom- 
age. It went over there and conspired with it to razee down 
" the World's Convention" to a seven-by-nine London confer- 
ence. Posterity will remember New Organization for that, if for 
nothing else. But they were defeated. They were completely 
l)afRed of their purpose by Garrison's masterly movement into 
ihe gallery of Free Masons' Hall. His position there was a per- 
fect discomfiture of their plot. They did not dream of that move- 
ment. They could not meet it. Why stands William Lloyd 
Garrison in the gallery, without that professed anti-slavery con- 
ference, — Garrison, the tiery incarnation of American abolition- 
ism ? — queries at once the philanthropy of Europe. That com- 



TO THE ABOLITIONISTS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. IQl 

mittee can't answer in their confusion. But an answer comes 
from O'Connell, that it was the " cowardly, unworthy, unjust and 
impolitic" exclusiveness, that, among other things, trampled 
American abolitionism under foot in the rejection of its dele- 
gates ! An answer comes from George Thompson, too, con- 
demning their soulless organization, and himself for not more 
promptly denouncing it in the meetings. Dr. Bowring, and Wil- 
liam Ashurst, and William Howitt, and other names, the pride 
of English and Scottish intellect and philanthropy, join in the 
condemnatory response. And the colored people of Boston too — 
let their resolves and their gallant reception of their own beloved 
champion, last Thursday night, at the Marlborough Chapel, ut- 
ter their answer to the question, why Garrison did not go into 
that conference. 

That quiet position in the gallery defeated the cunningly de- 
vised conspiracy of " British and Foreign" " New Organization." 
It set all England a thinking. It did more to agitate the grand 
questions of human rights and human duties, essential to the 
abolition of slavery, than any convention that could have been 
tolerated in Britain. A hundred lectures could not have done 
so much in a twelve-month. It hit the nail on the head. I am 
happy to have taken part in it. But I did not think of giving 
you my reasons for it here. This will be done in due season. 
The reasons are palpable to the sound anti-slavery mind, as soon 
as it learns the facts. 

I will only say I should have greatly delighted to mingle in 
" The World's Convention." I was willing to leave home and 
encounter the ocean for it. I was impatient to reach it as our 
wind-bound vessel lingered on the outward passage. But I did 
not find it. I had no credentials to its lifeless substitute. You 
would not have sent me to that substitute, and I would not have 
gone. I had nothing with which to purchase the committee's ticket 
of entrance. They laughed at the idea of a Worla'.s Convention. 
I ought to acknowledge that the highest respect was paid you 
every where I went, in my own personal treatment. Even the 
committee did not wish to hazard their popularity by lying under 
the imputation of incivility to New Hampshire abolitionism. 
9* 



102 RIDE OVER "THE BORDER." 

They urged me to go into the conference by every inducement, 
and by appeals to all my capacities. When I declined entering 
on my dishonored credentials, they invited me in as an individual. 
I was sensible of the civility — but they had dishonored your cre- 
dentials, and I could not compromise the indignity. 

Great spirits are at work in Britain for freedom. They are as 
expansive as humanity. But I see little that they can do for 
liberty there. They must come here and labor, and they are 
eager to come. The World's Convention must sit in New Eng- 
land instead of Old. And when it does, they will come over 
and join in it. 

I will not extend this long letter further. I could say some- 
thing of the scenes — the wonders — the men and women I saw on 
my journey through those famous old countries. And something 
I intended to say of the character of my beloved friend Garrison, 
which I had the happiness to witness intimately. But I will 
defer these to future opportunity, and close by subscribing my- 
self your brother and fellow-laborer in the precious cause of 
humanity, N. P ROGERS. 



RIDE OVER "THE BORDER." 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 18, 1810.] 

July 20th, early in the morning we took coach at the " Turf 
Hotel," in New Castle upon Tyne, for Scotland. It was one of 
the few fair mornings we saw in lowery England. Circumstances 
were such as might stir one to a lofty flow of spirits. We were 
in the neighborhood of the " Percies of Northumberland" — 
and but a day's ride from the Scottish border, and Edinborough. 
We were in famous old New Castle, the native place of " coals," 
— with its narrow and steep streets, as old as English history — 
their ancient walls, stained and blackened by the smoke of by- 
gone centuries, and the breath of the dark ages. The grim old 
castle and St. Nicholas' gloomy church — its huge tower propped, 
long ago, by buttresses to keep it from falling under the warfare 



RIDE OVER "THE BORDER." 103 

of time — its turreted steeple, as graceful as the interweaving 
boughs of an ancient elm, smoky old New Castle — and its mag- 
nificent modern town, of squares, and streets, and markets, and 
terraces, reared by the New Castle house-joiner — the self-taught, 
the wonderful Granger — the Napoleon of business. With no 
resources or means but his own exhaustless genius — an obscure 
mechanic, without aid or patronage, he started up and built a 
city in his native town, rivalling the " Regent Streets" of London, 
in beauty and magnificence, with the proudest market-place in 
Europe. 

Before us stretched out old England, far and wide — the cham- 
paign, heaved into hill — heaped up from the bowels of the earth by 
the coal miner. We were mounted a-top of the coach — a beauti- 
ful road, smooth as pounded and pulverised stone could make it — 
and fleet and finely-trained horses. There we were — on the road 
to old Scotland — through the wild wastes of Northumberland — 
in the old world — three thousand miles from the banks of the 
Pcmigewassdt ! 

The country soon began to lose its level, and put on an uneven 
aspect, as we entered among the Northumbrian swells. George 
Thompson had gone from New Castle to Edinborough, the Satur- 
day before — and the coachman, who was a Nor th-the-T weed man, 
said that a gentleman had told him we were going with him, and 
wished him to point us out the objects on the road, — and accord- 
ingly, soon after, he stretched his hand towards a line of moun- 
tains, that broke on the view from a high point of the road, and 
cried, " Them's the Cheviots !" A cry to send colder blood than 
ours from the surface. There they towered — the famous Che- 
viots ! We were beholding their peaks at last. By and by, a 
lonely hill-side stretched away on our right, with a single stone 
monument standing in the waste — without a tree or shrub. — 
" That," cried the coachman, " is the Chevy Chase, and the stone 
ye see yonder, is at the spot where the battle was fought, and 
where the Dooglas died." 

The stately hunters were not there. The " fifteen hundred 
bowmen bold" — nor the " twenty hundred Scottish spears." 

We kept rising higher and higher, and the country grew more 



104 RIDE OVER "THE BORDER." 

and more desolate and waste. Over it the English armies had 
marched after the Edwards, to attack Scotland, among her mists 
and glens. We saw none of their foot-prints, nor their flying ban- 
ners — their archer uniform of Lincoln green — nor heard the neigh 
of their chargers. All was silent save the moan of the autumn- 
sounding wind, — and nothing of human workmanship was to be 
seen, but our white, macadamized road, gleaming amid the green 
fern, and winding over the distant swells ; and nothing of life, but 
the heath fowl, that ever and anon started into the air, from the 
fern and the deep moss — 'and the sheep every where sprinkling the 
green wastes, watched by here and there a pi aided shepherd and 
his dog. Little stone sheep-folds, hung about on the dreary hill- 
sides, added to the desolations of the landscape. The view was 
grand and impressive, of those wide-spread barrens. They looked 
like immense swells of the ocean — green but bare, and scarcely 
less desolate, than if they had been deserts of sand. We came at 
last to a sharp ridge, that lay across our way — and that, the coach- 
man exclaimed, was " the Border." — A small bluish stone, about 
large enough for the bound of a farmer's lot, peeped out of the 
broom, on the right of the road, which he pointed out as the boun- 
dary between these ancient kingdoms. We crossed "the Border," 
and pitching over the hill, descended rapidly into Scotland. 

We entered, at once, an entirely new country. It was level, 
cultivated, and exceedingly soft and beautiful. Instead of Dr. 
Johnson's nakedness of trees, the country seemed quite well 
wooded, with a young, but not very thrifty growth. It did not 
look like the woodlands of England. In the distance loomed 
the Scottish mountains, enrobed in mist. The roads continued 
perfectly fine, and in finished repair — with a heap of hard stone, 
every few miles, piled nicely by the way side, which men and 
women, by virtue of " British usage," had hammered and pack- 
ed away, for repair of the roads. These repairs, hy the way, 
are made by trustees, and the expense raised at toll-gates, which 
every now and then obstruct the traveller on the road. They 
make better roads than our highway tax does ; but free labor will 
make our free roads, by and by, better even than theirs, which 
already seem to be perfect. 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 105 



We will try to give our readers, the first opportunity, some 
sketch of the road and route through the vales of Jedborough, and 
the Tweed — by Melrose — Dryburgh and Abbotsford, on to the 
peerless capital of North Britain. It is one stream of poetry and 
romance, all the way to Edinburgh, from the border. 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 
[From the Herald of Freedom of Oct. 2, 1840.] 

Just before our great anti-slavery meeting in Glasgow, news 
reached us, that " the Defender of the Constitution" had gone 
into one of the slave states, and absolved himself and his party 
from the reproach of anti-slavery. He there, as we heard by 
American papers, made his pro-slavery confession to Priest Pres- 
ton, of Carolina, who had threatened, in his sacerdotal displeasure 
in the United States senate, to hang Mr. Webster's anti-slavery 
constituents. 

George Thompson told the people of Glasgow of it, assembled 
in thousands at that mighty meeting. He told them of the intel- 
lectual power of the American statesman — of his northern birth 
and early education, — how he went to school to Liberty up 
among New Hampshire's rocks, — and how, having learned of 
another teacher in the schools of the South, he had now betrayed 
his native principles, and done homage to the slave system, in 
consideration of the suffrage of the South in the coming tug for 
the presidency. We wish the dark-eyed orator could have been 
within hearing, when Scotland uttered the indignant cry of 

' SUAME, SHAME !" 

John Dunlop, of Edinburgh, was there and heard it. He left 
the meeting, and hastened home to his seat at Randolph cliff, 
where a princely picture of Webster hung, painted by King, at 
Mr. Dunlop's order, in Washington, when he travelled in this 
country. He took down the recreant orator, reversed the paint- 
ing, and hung it up in the rear of the apartment, face to the wall, 
and placed a splendid painting of the chief Red Jacket over the 
fire-place in its room. 



106 WINCOBANK HALL. 



So posterity will hang up to everlasting reversal and reproba- 
tion, all memory of these haughty great ones, who despise the 
infant anti-slavery enterprise in these the days of its struggles 
and sacrifices. Verily they have now their reward. 



WINCOBANK HALL. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Oct. 16, 1840.] 

WiNCOBANK Hall is one of those romantic homes in proud 
old England, which in rank and grandeur stand mid way between 
the comfortable commoner's dwelling-house and the castles and 
palaces of royalty or the peerage. It is at a picturesque place 
near Sheffield, called Wincobank, and is the seat of a highly esti- 
mable English lady, Mrs. Rawson. We met with her at Lon- 
don, and when we left that overgrown city for the North, had the 
good fortune of her society as a fellow-passenger on the railroad. 
With her we had John Dunlop, of Edinburgh, an elegant scholar, 
a warm-hearted Scotsman and a christian, (we fell in with him 
on onr journey up St. Paul's cathedral,) Charles Lenox Remond, 
the young colored orate r from Rhode Island, co-delegate with 
us from the American Society to " the World's Convention," 
{which neither of us could Jind,) and then George Thompson 
and William Lloyd Garrison. With such a company — on 
such a jaunt — who could have failed of the loftiest enjoyment 
incident to this earth's excursions 1 

We took our departure from the magnificent " Victoria Hotel," 
close by the entrance to the great Northern Rail-way — an en- 
trance that looked like a Grecian temple, and which alone was 
said to have cost ten thousand pounds sterling. It is a sample 
of the splendors of England, where the people are perishing for 
want of food. We shot out of London at the lightning speed 
of the British locomotive, and were, in a twinkling, deep in the 
country. O, the country — the glorious country — of old Eng- 
land ! A church spire on the left towered as we sped, high into 
the sky above a forest of British oaks, whose immense, thick 



JAMES MONTGOMERY. 107 

tops lay piled along the verdant height, in shape like a mass of 
clouds — as thick and as fleecy. It was the church of " Harrow 
on the Hill" — the scene of Byron's school-boy days. The mem- 
ory of the dark-spirited bard flashed across us as evanescently as 
this glimpse of Harrow. On we glanced through field and wood- 
land, with the green, sweet hedge row lined, — along canal — 
through deep cut and tunnel — tunnel darker than any midnight 
this side the pole — the din of whose thundering passage realized 
to our stunned ears all the noise of a battle, the rattle of mus- 
ketry, and the roar of a cannonade — through lofty banks purpled 
o'er and scarleted to their tops with old England's flowers — over 
moss and moorland — along the fat pasture, where John Bull's 
herds wantoned, as his 'people do not wanton, up to their eyes in 
feed — the ample-bodied, sleek-hided, small-headed, slender-neck- 
ed, no-horned, horned cattle of England. On we raced, in sight 
of distant ruins and haughty halls — of crumbling old towers and 
kingly castles — on — through the uplands of beauteous Derby- 
shire, and by the Dervvent Water — amid all that the strong hand 
of tyranny could achieve in a thousand years to cultivate, adorn 
and beautify, a region moistened perpetually by that verdure-giving 
climate, — till sunset brought us to the neighborhood of old Shef- 
field, the great cutlery shop of Britain and of the world. There 
we parted with our fellow-traveller Mrs. Rawson and her beautiful 
little daughter — they to Wincobank Hall, and we to the Tontine 
Inn in famous Sheffield, under pledge to Mrs. R. that we would 
meet " some of her neighbors to breakfast next morning at the 
Hall." 

At eight next morning, accordingly, we took the railroad for 
a three or four mile trip, and as we dismounted, at the foot of 
Wincobank ridge, to take the foot-path over it to the Hall, a 
keen-eyed, active gentleman of sixty — undersized and dressed 
in black, accosted George Thompson, and was introduced to us 
as — James Montgomery. He was one of Mrs. Rawson's 
" neighbors," and was on his way to breakfast with us at Winco- 
bank Hall,— from his home " The Mount near Sheffield." We 
had the pleasure of climbing with him, side by side, over that 
romantic ridge, and of beholding the landscape that lay at its 



103 WINCOBANK HALL. 

foot, — a more glorious one, when we got to the summit, cannot 
be often seen from the tops of this world's ridges. There stretched 
out, under a bright morning, the vale of the Rother, and that 
winding stream, the olden home of " Cedric the Saxon," in Ivan- 
hoe, — the " Boar of Rotherwood." Smoky old Sheffield gloomed 
at the extremity of the valley on the right, and in the distance 
on the left the turrets of the ancient cathedral of Rotherham. 
As we looked upon it with our celebrated companion, we threat- 
ened him we would assuredly tell of it — if ever we lived to reach 
the other side of the Atlantic — how we gazed on such a scene 
as that, along with " The Wanderer of Switzerland." He said 
we might, in welcome. And we have more than once made 
good our menace. Pitching over the ridge, with a prospect on 
the other side of unutterable beauty and wide extent, and thought 
to be finer, said George Thompson, than the vale of the Rother, 
we descended some thirty or fifty rods to Wincobank Hall. It 
was a fair spot — one at which a " way-faring man would pause 
and linger, forgetful of his onward road." The old hall was of 
rough stone, with slated roof, and built and arranged, with its 
out-houses and appurtenances, seemingly with all the taste and 
beauty that architecture and wealth could accomplish. It looked 
equal to the descriptions of the halls of " merry England," in the 
old romances. We were welcomed by a crowd of elegant visit- 
ants and inhabitants, and ushered into the library, which seemed 
to be the principal apartment, so far as we had the means of see- 
ing, and where, among the stately furniture, were displayed some 
(en thousand volumes of the choicest British editions, with their 
rich, plain backs, and heavy binding. At the farther end of the 
spacious room you looked out through a whole wall of windows 
that reached the floor, into a garden of Eden behind the hall. 
There stretched the lawn of velvet — " shaven with the scythe" — 
under the dark beeches and the glittering hollies — here and there 
tlie rustic chairs made of the crooked limbs of trees, and the 
classic vases and urns. 

Poet Montgomery and our own travelling company were sam- 
ple of the numerous party present. We breakfasted intellectu- 
ally, and sat at the table until near twelve. About one, having 



WENTWORTH HOUSE AND PARK. IO9 

parted with Montgomery, who promised us a call in the evening 
at the Tontine in Sheffield, two carriages provided by our kind 
hostess took our company to ride some half dozen miles, to see 

WENTWORTH HOUSE AND PARK, 

the celebrated seat of Earl Fitzwilliam. We rode to it along 
those exquisite English roads, bordered ail the way with haw- 
thorn hedge row. As we approached the park, the road turned 
off from the public way, and we went through one of those en- 
trances that lead to the haughty retreats of titled England. It 
had cost undoubtedly more than many a better man's " house and 
home." An extensive outer park opened upon us with a most beau- 
tiful, unfenced road. To the right, overlooking the forest, stood 
a temple, called by the coachman the Mausoleum. It was a lofty 
stone structure, and in the top of it, he said, the former Fitz- 
william was entombed. Men and women were at work in a hay- 
field on the left of the open grounds ; a beautiful pond lay beyond 
them, and away by the farther side we saw a company of the 
grooms of his lordship (or His Grace,) each leading one of His 
Grace's racers training for the turf at Doncaster or at Ascot. As 
we drove by a clump of oaks, we started up a stag with a pretty 
clever set of antlers on his head. He saw we were no hunters 
or nobility, and went to his feeding again. We met a strolling 
minstrel. He had been up to Wentwoith House to play for a 
guerdon. 

After riding a mile or two, we came to the entrance of the 
inner park, and passing it, the lordly mansion itself broke upon 
uur view a mile distant, standing its back to a thick, dark woods, 
and fronting an immense open green, where a thousand deer 
were grazing, intermingled with the white buffaloes and other 
animals of the old world — wild beasts from far countries. The 
" House" was a dark brown stone, with a six hundred feet front, 
most exquisitely built. The centre was a projection, with the 
gable supported on fair pillars, standing on an elevated base ; and 
in the centre of each ample wing a similar projection, of similar 
dimensions, — the whole of most beautiful proportions and forms, 
A row of superb statuary ranged along the roof. The softened 
10 



110 WENTWORTH HOUSE AND PARK. 

sunlight of England fell faintly on the green lawn that stretched 
out almost boundlessly before it. The hand of agriculture might 
not touch that proud greensward. It was guarded as the carpet 
of nobility, and of nobility's deer and hounds and race horses. 
The plough might not profane it. The hungry, " bread-taxed 
Englishman" might not vex its face to draw out from its fertile 
mould the staff of life. Its countless acres lay doomed to per- 
petual sterility. It was still wondrously fair and beautiful, and 
it hath a charm even to the eye of the depressed peasant, who 
regards it as part and parcel of the nobility of his own native 
England. No one hugs nobility like the hungry subject, whom 
it grinds to powder and crushes to the earth. He would esteem 
it sacrilege to mar that Wentworth Park with the plough, or cut 
up its now useless surface into farms, to gladden the hearts of a 
hundred of the families of destitution. Why, what would be- 
come of the poor of England, he thinks, if it were not for the 
munificent nobility ! He could no more live without them, than 
republicans could without their standing army of politicians and 
office-holders. 

We were admitted to the recesses of Wentworth House, and 
were conducted by a serving woman throughout its princely apart- 
ments. The noble Earl and his family were absent. They were 
abroad, travelling in Germany — wandering " up and down in dry 
places," we suppose, " see'king" the " rest" they could not find 
in that regal abode. The interior of the mansion was as impos- 
ing as its exterior, and there seemed no end to the statues and 
paintings that adorned it. There was a room one hundred and 
forty feet in length, hung throughout with paintings of the great 
masters. Among the statues was an exquisite one of the Trojan 
shepherd Paris, taken from among the ruins of Herculaneum. 
No wonder, we thought as we beheld it, that Venus and Juno 
submitted to his umpirage their rival claims to beauty. A hea- 
thenish idea. — Fitzwilliam's rooms looked like the interior of a 
heathen temple. We remember among the paintings, the earl's 
favorite horse Whistlejacket, which at full length hung opposite 
his own — whose pedigree and exploits on the turf our conductress 
eloquently proclaimed to us. The famous earl of Strafford, and 



WE-NTWORTH HOUSE AND PARK. HI 

his secretary reading him the warrant for his execution. A 
model of Solomon's temple, of the size cf a small church organ, 
of transparent tortoise shell mounted in gold. We can't " begin" 
to describe the gorgeous secrets of that prison house. The cost 
of them would defer, for a twelve-month, the starvation of all 
Britain and Ireland. We beheld with our own unassisted eve, 
the very identical bed, on which she that teas afterwards Victo- 
ria, queen of England, slept — and her dressing-room, while she 
sojourned, in queenly expectation, at this stately mansion. Her 
bed was of purple and gold, and the linen thereof (if it had linen) 
must have been the '' fine linen of Eg\-pt.'' It was every way a 
couch worthy the slumbers of Cleopatra. To show the rank of 
Wentworth House, it is one of the two or three spots, spoken 
of at court, where her majesty would probably pause during the 
anticipated birth of an heir apparent to the throne of Britain. 
And what an inheritance for a worm of mortality to wanton in 
for a season ! Perilous inheritance by and by, when crushed and 
starved humanity will heave up under it like a volcano. That day 
is at hand. The idea of " rights of man" will cross the Atlantic 
in some of these steamers, and stir the soul of the English yeo- 
man to throw off the load, that crushes him, into the sea. 

We saw a chapel in the secret recesses of Wentworth House. 
A secluded apartment, where those haughty inmates retired to do 
their modern penance. There lay the golden praver books on 
the crimson cushions. The gallery above it was hung with mag- 
nificent paintings. 

Among other things we saw his Grace's library. And amid 
the noble volumes we discovered an American book, labeled 
with the name of Webster. Within was written *' Fitzwilliam.' 
(by the noble earl, no doubt,) " a gift from George Ticknor. 
Esq." It was Webster's Speeches. A full-length portrait of Fox 
hung hard by, in the utmost attitude of oratory ; — a position he 
was thrown into, perhaps, when on the abolition of the slave 
trade — or ranting for the American revolution. His great rival, 
who reposed among Fitzwilliam's volumes, would be ashamed to 
look him in the face now, since his homage to the slave system 
at Alexandria. 



1|0 WENTWORTH HOUSE AND PARK. 



Leaving the house, we departed a diHerenl way from the one 
we entered, and went out two or three miles through the culti- 
vated grounds of the enormous estate. Immense fields were 
waving with crops of barley and wheat and oats— in the highest 
state of cultivation— by the hand of vassal labor. We could 
take no pleasure in looking over such fields. They were dressed 
and tilled by half-paid toil. We saw on a hill some miles dis- 
tant a lofty monument, and asked our friend coachman what it 
was, and he said it was the Keppel monument, — put up there by 
the old earl, to commemorate the acquittal of Admiral Keppel. 
We remembered Admiral Keppel, sometime in the last century, 
and his celebrated trial by court martial. It seems Fitzwilliam 
was his friend, and to show his vohle exultation at the acquittal, 
reared that structure, at a cost which would maintain scores of 
suffering families among the laborers of England. It was a su- 
perb-looking object. Keppel was a sturdy old sea-fighter, and he 
was accused, we believe, of a lack of brute courage, or some 
such admiral (and admirable) quality, in the guardians of Eng- 
land's naval glory. 

We at length came to the verge of the tremendous estate, and 
issued from it into the smaller parcels of ground into which this 
subject island remains cut up, since the great carving by the 
Norman conqueror. A beautiful road led us by a new route to 
Wincobank, where we arrived a little before night. A hospitable 
and elegant refreshment at the hall, and we returned by coach 
to Sheffield. James Montgomery had been there, and kindly left 
for us a beautiful little work he had recently written for the 
benefit of Bristol Hospital, the healing miracles of our Savior, 
in verse, — with an autograph memento on the blank leaf of our 
meeting' at Wincobank. We prized it higher than we should a 
race horse from the proprietor of Wentworth House. Next morn- 
ing we took the railroad for the ancient city of York— and, sun 
about two hours high, came in sight of the famous Minster ; which 
was some time in sight before we reached it, although we went at 
the rate of forty miles an hour. 



RIDE INTO EDINBURGH. 113 



RIDE INTO EDINBURGH. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Oct. 30, 1810.] 

We should love to give our beloved readers some sketch of the 
things we witnessed abroad upon their anti-slavery errand. We 
did not find " the World's Convention," — the more shame to 
tiiose, who from this and the other side of the water, hindered 
its sitting. The day is at hand when it will sit. England will 
not have the honor, however, as she might have had, of its first 
sitting. We found the materials of it, scattered up and down in 
England and Scotland and Ireland, — and we did our utmost to 
urge their great spirits to onward and decisive action for human- 
ity. We met and mingled with the champions of mankind, al- 
though they were not gathered in Freemasons' Hall, in free 
" convention." 

But we set out to tell of the inanimate scenery of the old lands. 
We tried to lay up what we saw of it for the Herald entertain- 
ment of our New Hampshire friends. But it was so varied — so 
much — so rapidly successive, as well as 2/rtpressive, — each suc- 
ceeding impression bedimmed the first, as waves efface the in- 
scribed beach ! We " remember a mass of things — but nothing 
distinctly." It was a continued panorama — or a long gallery of 
paintings. We wish the reader could have rode with us into 
Edinburgh from Melrose on the morning of the 21st of July. It 
is forty or fifty miles. We took coach in the neighborhood of 
the famous Melrose Abbey. It was a f lir Scottish morning. The 
mist went up lightly from the Tweed, and brooded over the vale 
of the Teviot. It was a famous place we were going to, — 
" Auld Reekie !" and a famous spot we were starting from. We 
were in Scotland — " world-famous Scotland," as Garrison finely 
called it at our grand Glasgow meeting. We were 

" All in the pleasant Tevi'dale, — fast by the river Tweed," 

where the Bruces, the Wallaces and the Douglasses had tramped 
in the days of Scottish story. Where Ettrick and Teviot dale 
had marched their " blue bonnets" to the " moonlight leap over 
10* 



114 RIDE INTO EDINBURGH. 

the Border," and where Walter Scott had " lived and had his 
home." The wide world has not a spot, to us, where the raven 
imagination would likelier light down, and rest her wing and the 
sole of her foot. It seems a dream as we remember it, here by 
the side of the Merrimack. But we were there, the 21sf day of 
July, and awake. The night before we had explored old Melrose 
Abbey, along with our beloved fellow-traveller, William Lloyd 
Garrison. The true-hearted ahditionist can understand us when 
we remember him enthusiastically as parcel of the scene. His 
presence enhanced the interest of old Melrose. It caused us, as 
we mused there, to look future, as that old ruin caused us to 
look past. We clambered together over the crumbled grave- 
stones of the storied dead of Scotland. We got up by the north- 
ern twilight, and groped along the galleries and under the " lan- 
cet arches" of the old monastery, where the monks traversed in 
the deeper twilight of the middle ages, or the dim periods that 
preceded them. We climbed the ruined stair, to the top of one 
■ f the old towers, and sat there among the ivy, and heard the 
primeval ticking of the abbey clock, that had seemed to outlast 
the massive walls in which it hung. Timers keeper, survivincr 
time's ravages upon the chiseled stone. We had a night view 
from this observatory of the Eildon hills, with their triform tops, 
famous in the legends of Scotland, as cleft by the hand of Mi- 
chael Scott, the wizard, whose bones had long ago mouldered to 
dust in the abbey vault below us. We went down and stood 
upon his grave-stone. The " heart of Bruce" lay buried by its 
side. The dark, rank grass grew all along where once stretched 
the tesselated marble floors. The quiet sheep fed there by day, 
and at night lay down to rest in the bed-chambers, perchance, 
of the haughty abbots. We heard < ne bleat, as we stood pon- 
dering at an old monument in the abbey burying-ground hard by. 
It sounded strangely from out the hollow ruins. 

But we have started for Edinburgh. We took the top of the 
coach — as Well for prospect as for economy. An " inside" were 
on odd position on the road from Melrose to Edinhitrgh. We 
bade good by, forever, to the graceful old abbey — its wondrous 
carving showing more di.^tinctly in the day-light. Off on the 



RIDE INTO EDINBURGH. 115 

right, in our rear, as we started, Dryburgh Abbky, some four 
miles distant down the Tweed, a hoary ruin, looked out upon us 
from a wood of oaks. An impressive sight. It is the tomb of 
Walter Scott. Up the Tweed a little way, towered the colossal 
statue of Sir AVilliam Wallace. It stood on a wooded hill-side, 
overhanging the stream, and looking down upon it as the guard- 
ian of Scotland's favorite river. — A few miles onward, and we 
crossed the Tweed, and lo ! Abbotsford ! the last living abode 
of the Great Magician, with its muhi-turreted top, shooting above 
a wood of his own hand's planting. It stands in a low valley, with- 
in a few rods of the bank of the Tweed. A forest, planted by the 
same hand, overspread, for miles around it, the hills, which were 
naked and bare when he became proprietor of the charming 
neighborhood. Tweed is a modest stream to one who has learned 
his definition of river, this side the Atlantic. It looked the 
" Tweed's fair river ;" but the " broad and deep" must have 
been seen nearer down to the German ocean. The road was of 
white, macadamized dust, and as smooth as a floor all the way. 
Not a root, nor a scollop, nor mud, nor stone. The coach wheels 
rolled over it as over plank — when we came to down hills, the 
patent drag was instantly slipped under the hind wheel, and the 
fine-trained team descended without slacking their trot. The 
land was cultivated like the fairest of England — the " aits" and 
the barley, and the wheat. Fine crops of hay too, and the lads 
and lassies of Scotland were out among it on hill-side and lea, on 
bank and brae. The country, bare and sightless in the days of 
Dr. Johnson, is now adorned with a growth of respectable sized 
forest, — planted with the love of beauty and the taste natural to 
Scotland. Now and then a parti-colored magpie flew up from 
the hedge as we drove along. We saw but few birds, however ; 
tiie hedge rote does not teem with them, like our hedge fence. 
We coursed along a high hill-side, and below us to the left, shone 
the slated roofs of the little town of Galashiels, a manufacturing 
place of some considerable importance on the Gala-water. A 
range of green summits loomed out of the mist on our left. They 
were the Pentland hills. We passed a low, winding vale, with a 
small stream running along it — and down on our right, a mile 



116 RIDE INTO EDINBURGH. 

distant, on a knoll by the side of a little water, stood Bothwell 
Castle — a grim old fortress, where a fellow-passenger told us 
Queen Mary retreated after her escape from Loch Leven, but was 
soon compelled to flee from it. We will not be too certain that 
it was this castle. By and by, a mountain away a-head, half hid 
in mist — green — insulated, rising like a tower on a plain, and the 
outline on the top of it, like a lion asleep. " That," cried a young 
Edinburgh passenger, as enthusiastic as we were, " is Arthur's 
Seat, and soon ye'll see Ed'nborough." The country was level 
and beautiful. The day was fine for Scotland. It had rained, 
as it had every day since we landed in England on the \ltk of 
June — and the Scottish mist was on the hills ; still it was fair 
weather. 

We saw another castle — Craigmillar — on a hill crowned with 
noble oaks. It was a giant of a castle, and the favorite summer 
residence of Mary Queen of Scots. It stood about a mile off 
on our right, and seemed a ruin. We saw the " hills of Braid." 
Arthur's Seat grew more and more distinct. We could see the 
Salisbury craigs — the rocky battlement that girdled its side to- 
ward the city ; and at last the Edinburgh castle and the " city 
of palaces" herself — and a more glorious looking object we can 
scarcely conceive of It was piled up like the cliffs of a moun- 
tain, and the towers of the old castle were clouded in the mist. 
The princely streets and rows of palaces — the semi-circles of 
stone architecture, kept developing from the vapor as we drew 
nearer, till the coachman whirled us into the city, and almost at 
the threshold of it, in a high, airy, cleanly region, we found our- 
selves in George Thompson' s " Duncan street, Newington" — at 
" No. 8" of which — (every abolitionist wants to know) — the 
"fugitive from justice" has his home. We of course were 
dropped down at the nearest spot to No. 8. The stage-coach, 
by the way, don't go out of the straight road to drop or take up 
passengers in Britain. Thompson had expected us. We had 
parted with him the Saturday morning before, at New Castle upon 
Tyne. He was out at the street corner promptly to receive us, 
and asking a broad-shouldered porter, with a coil of rope on his 
back, to take charge of our luggage, took us at once to his home. 



RIDE INTO EDINBURGH. II7 

We were joined there by Charles Lenox Remond and John Dun- 
lop, which made good our group that started together that day 
week, from London for the North. It was two o'clock, after 
noon. We found a beautiful family at George Thompson's — one 
little orator about a week old- — the little one born in New Eng- 
land, now a bright-eyed, sweet-voiced, distinct-spoken lad, — little 
Garrison, a younger boy than he, born after the " fugitive' s" 
return to "justice" and to Scotland, — and two fair-haired, older 
daughters. These are childish facts ; but the children are 
George Thompson's, and that gives them a place in the Herald 
of Freedom, and in the interest and hearts of abolitionists. We 
found our beloved friend neatly and abundantly situated. The 
work cut out for the delegates to " The World's Convention" for 
the afternoon was to undergo a splendid dinner at Dr. Beilby's, 
one of the leading physicians of Edinburgh ; and for the even- 
ing, to speak at the Rechabite festival, a great tee-total meeting 
at Dun Edin hall ; for which, of course, we all felt abundantly 
prepared. 

We will wind up the day with our hurried narrative, and say 
that our first specimen of Edinburgh hospitality was of the most 
elegant and friendly character. Dr. Beilby was, for our host, all 
that the Abernethies, or the Rushes of the literary capital of the 
world could be, and his wife, an Irish woman, was his equal, and 
his Scottish guests were such men as George Thompson and 
John Dunlop, Adam Black of the Edinburgh Review, and the 
celebrated Dr. Abercrombie. From the dinner table we went to 
Dun Edin hall, where were gathered two thousand of the moral 
flower of Edinburgh ; and when that tee-total meeting broke up, 
it was after two o'clock in the morning. We never met a gather- 
ing of such spirited people. We were not inclined to sleep here, 
weary as we must have been. We realized where we rcere. That 
kept us from drowsiness ; but there was nothing calculated to 
stupify in the speeches of Thompson, Garrison and Remond, or 
the stirring strains of an instrumental band of music, that played 
at intervals from the orchestra of that splendid hall, or the finer 
strains of a band of vocalists — a dozen or fifteen of the amateur 
singers among the young gentlemen of Edinburgh. We never 



118 LETTER TO EDITORIAL CHAIR. 

heard the like of their singing. When Remond rose — introdu- 
ced by Garrison as the representative to Scotland of the colored 
people of New England, they cheered him, that multitude, with 
clapping, and waving of hats, caps, and kerchiefs, and with Scot- 
tish hurrahs, till the rafters of Dun Edin hall fairly trembled. 
Such is prejudice against color among the polished people of the 
" modern Athens." We wish our democratic republican negro- 
haters had been there to be thunderstruck at it. 



LETTER TO EDITORIAL CHAIR. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of November 6, 1840.] 

Plymouth, Nov. 4, 1840. 

TO THE EDITORIAL CHAIR OF THE HERALD OF FREEDOM. 

Beloved old Chair, — You are not old, as my Chair, or as 
the Chair of the Herald, but in your private capacity of mere 
seat. What your capacity held, or whom, before you became 
Chair of the Herald, I do not know ; but you are by many years, 
apparently, the senior of the paper, in whose service you now 
faithfully stand ; and so are an old Chair. If you were old as 
the editory seat of the little anti-slavery paper, whose servant you 
are, I should respectfully style you, and not familiarly, as I now 
do. I take it, you and I both shall be more respected some years 
hence, than we are now, — at least, treated with more respect. 
You are now sat upon, while I am trodden upon — you by your 
friends, and the friends of liberty — I by its enemies. But we 
both bear it patiently. I said we should be respected hereafter, 
for I expect myself to be remembered in connection with the first 
paper ever printed in New Hampshire in the service of human- 
ity. Although I shall not, as I expect, add any thing to the 
memorability of the paper, yet I shall get remembered among 
the other incidents of it, and as one who did his best faithfully 
to keep it in effectual operation for the great cause. 

I believe Joseph Horace Kimball used to be your occupant. 



LETTER TO EDITORIAL CHAIR. 119 

This will be an honorable circumstance to you, and give you an 
honorable perpetuity. 

But let futurity, as to these things, take care of itself. Nei- 
ther chair nor those who set in them, are much benefited by 
being respected or remembered, especially the occupants — for 
they die. The chairs sometimes go down to posterity, to be seen, 
or respected while they are yet alive. I saw some very respecta- 
ble old chairs, on my recent anti-slavery journey across the water. 
They were not editorial chairs, but " chairs of state." I did not 
respect them much for this, though others do. I saw a very re- 
spectable old chair of state in London. It stood in Westminster 
Abbey — in a little old mouldy loft, among the dark nooks of that 
old monastic pile. Queen Elizabeth sat in it, when they put the 
crown on her head, (which a hair comb would have much better 
become, in my opinion — or her native head of hair ; and so I 
would say of James, who was crowned in it after her.) It was 
an old chair, and little like what modern subjection would build 
for its queen. But they reverence it for its oldness. Victoria 
was crowned in it, — although it was the homeliest chair I saw in 
Britain, except one, and that I saw in York Minster, and it was 
the dishonored one in which hunch-backed Richard the Third 
was crowned, in the famous old Roman city of York. I said it 
was a homely chair. You will take no offence, when I say it 
very much resembles yourself It had an ornamental stone in it, 
not such as kings and queens would wear, but quite as becoming, 
I think, and adding full as much to its beauty. It was a famous 
stone. It was brought from Scone in Scotland. There was a 
wizard saying about it, that wherever that stone should be, there 
should be the crown of Britain or the crown of Scotland. When 
Scottish king James became king of Great Britain, he carried it 
with him to London, and it has remained there ever since. It is 
a homely, clumsy stone, not one of " the precious," but a piece 
of blue, common, field stone — some two feet and a half long, and 
ten inches broad, if I remember right, and is deposited in the 
frame-work of the old rickety chair, directly up under the seat, 
across the fore part of it. I sat down in the chair with my hat 
on, in token of irreverence for crowns and the baubles of state. 



120 LETTER TO EDITORIAL CHAIR. 

I felt no such deference for seats as I do when I sit on your 
honored flag-bottom, and make the local inspiration to help me 
say something for him, who has no seat among the human family. 
But there were many old associations hovering about that ancient 
chair. It was in the depths of that monltish old pile — above it 
was the surpassing beauty of its lofty, vaulting dome, that seemed 
to spring upward like the boughs of a tree, and reminded me, by 
close resemblance, of the intermingling elm boughs that wove 
themselves into each other, above my head, in one of the walks 
in the royal park at Windsor. They looked, where they meet 
over head, for all the world like the lancet arches in the roof of 
Westminster Abbey, and the stone raftering was about the size 
of the elm boughs, and resembled them, and I have no doubt 
Gothic architecture stole its forms of beauty from the native tree 
tops. Close by the old succession chair was a vaulted stair way — 
closed and hollow, leading up to some old retreat of superstition, 
the old locks on the entrances eat all up, a century ago or more 
probably, with rust. I can't tell you so that you can understand 
me, the objects that surrounded that old chair. I did not think, 
when I begun this letter, of saying a word about the abbey. It 
is all a digression. I meant to say something of New Hampshire 
anti-abolition, to watch which, I have again left you, as I have 
had to, often in times past, and which you have kept in awe, quite 
as much when empty as when filled. 

I will say nothing of king Richard's chair, or of the mighty 
York Minster, where it stands, now. I intend to tell of these 
things for the entertainment of our beloved anti-slavery readers, 
who can gather English history out of these old chairs and cathe- 
drals, and so something that belongs to the cause of human liber- 
ty. Theie things we will declare ichen we meet again. I do not 
feel at home away from you. No sofa or couch of down yields 
me the reposing support, to say nothing of the philanthropic ex- 
citement, which I experience within your massy old frame wprk. 
I am interrupted, and must subscribe myself. 
With much love to you and our readers. 

Yours and theirs, 

N. P. ROGERS. 



PRO-SLAVERY "EXCOMMUNICATION." 121 

PRO-SLAVERY « EXCOMMUNICATION." 
[From the Herald of Freedom of March 19, 1841.] 

Let us not be misunderstood or misapprehended in our esti- 
mate of the bearing of these church doings, on the anti-slavery 
cause — or in our purpose in assailing sectarian organizations 
And because we speak strongly, and at times from the impulse 
of the moment, let not our friends esteem it rash or extravagant. 
Our views, we seriously believe, they will by and by see to be 
sound, and in accordance with the gospel — and necessary to be 
broached for the advancement and triumph of the anti-slavery 
enterprise. Somebody must begin to broach them. Somebody 
must startle community, torpid and fettered as it lies, under secta- 
rian delusion and despotism. While religion is sectarian, slave- 
ry is safe. While the monster has the countenance and support 
of all the institutions of sect throughout the entire country, she 
will laugh at the impotent efforts of abolitionists to jostle her in 
her gory seat. We have seen and felt that all the " influence 
and power" of sect is against our movements for the slave. We 
cannot go on while this " power and influence" remains over the 
people. They won't dare become abolitionists, to any useful 
extent. They are not allowed to hear the truth. The public ear 
is deafened and stopped up against it. And it must be so. Sect 
cannot have it otherwise, and live. Self-preservation drives her 
to smother anti-slavery, if she can. Look at her pulpits, and her 
presses, and her literary institutions, and her benevolent institu- 
tions, and her whole machinery. It is all of it — every rope, 
wheel, pulley, cog, dead against our movement, and all its prin- 
ciples. And you may as well propitiate slavery herself, as sect. 
You can improve and ameliorate the one as well as the other. 
Seeing this, and feeling it, we assail sect. It is our anti-slavery 
duty. We are false to the slave, if we fail to do it. We know 
it will alarm and offend many of our friends. It will shake our 
little subscription list — and sift it again, after new organization 
and bastard philanthropy have thinned it down to a forlorn hope. 
It will deepen the scowl with which a pro-slavery community 
11 



122 CORRESPONDENCE WITH PIERPONT. 

glowers at us in the highway. What of all that? It has got to 
be done, or the slave perishes for all any interference but the 
avenging arni of the Almighty. 

Three millions of our common humanity welter on the plan- 
tation, in the capacity of the brute. Fifteen millions, in mad de- 
fiance of God, are revelling around them in professed liberty and 
Christianity, as dead to their unutterable condition as a yard of 
grave-stones. Interspersed over the whole land are the strong 
holds of religious profession, called churches — leagued together 
in merciless fellowship*, from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada line 
Their great, overgrown, gloated sects love slavery, as the drunk- 
ard does his drink. They pamper it — they frown at him who 
would disturb it ; and if they had the power, they would put him 
to death. They may come to have that power yet. Slaveholding 
is no where deemed unchristian among them. They hold that it 
is altogether christian to enslave. Their members, their minis- 
ters, their local organizations, hold slaves, and trade in them, 
and traffic in the acknowledged disciples of Christ. It is held 
no fault, in the eye of the American church, that a man sell his 
own children ; ay, that he be a grower of children for sale, and 
even to carry on ecclesiastical movements. 

Can anti-slavery advance in face of a religion like this? Can 
we discredit slavery — much less bring it to an end — while the 
entire religion of the country defends it thus, and maintains that 
it is of God ? 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH PIERPONT. 
[From the Herald of Freedom of April 16, 1841.] 

Boston, March 20, 1841. 
My i\\x'\ce-1ionored, because persecuted friend ! — I give you joy. 
You now know, if you never before knew, the full force and 
beauty of that " beatitude" — " Blessed are they which are perse- 
cuted for righteousness' sake." You and I do not belong to the 
same sect — and I rejoice that we do not ; for if we did, we might 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH PIERPONT 123 

not know, practically and experimentally, how very feeble, how 
much like burning tow-strings are the ties of sect, when they are 
pulled upon by the strong sympathies of humanity — the attrac- 
tions of the christian spirit. 

I congratulate you ! — I almost wish somebody would excom- 
municate me. Well — it may be said that has been done by the 
great majority of the christian church in the country, and in all 
Christendom. As a Unitarian, I am, in effect, excommunicated 
from the christian fold. But this was done so long ago, and I 
have lived and labored so long and so happily as a Unitarian, that 
the old excommunication, like one ru7i of the small pox, has got 
about worked out of the constitution, and I have become liable, 
if properly exposed, to take it again. And it is altogether pos- 
sible that I may soon have to take it again. I am to be brought 
again before a council to answer for my overt acts of treason 
against the majesty of Rum. 

If those our adversaries only knew how much they exalt us, 
the poor victims of their spiritiial pride, in your case, and pursc- 
pride in mine, we need ask for them, I think, no severer penalty. 
But of this exaltation thei/ have no conception. Those things 
are hidden from " the wise and prudent of this world." They 
think, poor souls ! that they are making us unhappy. That's all 
they know about it. 

I rejoice, " my dear sir," to see that your spirit is not broken, 
though your connection with the Plymouth church is. Thei/ 
excommunicate t/ou! No^you have long since excommuni- 
cated them ! — that is, you have placed yourself in a position in 
which you have nothing, or very little, in common with them ; 
where there was really no communion between your spirit and 
their spirits. Well, let them put you out of their synagogue, and 
think that in so doing, they are doing God service — as indeed 
they are ! — though in a way that they think not of Let them 
excommunicate you ! There is another church, of which I verily 
believe you are a member, in full communion, and — " in regular 
standing," I was going to add ; but regular standing is standing 
according to rule, (rcgula,) — thus understood, I imagine your 
standing is not very regular, if we take the rules of any " visible 



124 CORRESPONDENCE WITH PIJERPONT. 

church" on earth as the criterion ; but of the true church I be- 
lieve you are a member, i. e. the church of the true and the de- 
voted, — the daring, the trusting, the tried and the approved. 
Faint not, my dear friend ; fail not. No — your spirit cannot 
faint ; the flesh may be weak, but the spirit is strong ; — so will it 
be, while you are persecuted. Though your outward man per- 
ish, yet your inward man — which is all the man that is worth 
our concern — your inward man will gain strength, day by day. 
My dear friend, may God bless you ! — He surely will. 

J. PIERPONT. 



Concord, B'larch 25, 1811. 
My very dear Friend : — Your kind letter of the 20th I have 
received. I have long been yi ur admirer, and since personal 
acquaintance with you, have been proud of the notice you have 
shown me. I love you now, and here promise to admire you no 
longer. It was indeed kind in you to send me your consolatory — 
congratulatory greeting — at a time when you would naturally 
suppose me most in want of it. I value it none the less highly 
from the fact that somehow I have scarcely thought myself per- 
secuted at all, by this little excommunication. I feel the excite- 
ment and fervor of the battle we are waging, and a considerable 
sword-cut would hardly give me a smarting sensation. This 
excommunication really strikes me as resting on my " old organ- 
ized anti-slavery," and not on myself It is evident what it is for. 
It does not in the least dishonor me. I am not alone. I am in 
no business where want of patronage or of reputation would im- 
pair my living or my prosperity. I have given up business. I 
am the slave's advocate, and my clients canH be made to forsake 
me, or withdraw their patronage. I have not a particle of repu- 
tation to forfeit, — having been for some time past " of no reputa- 
tion." So that I am not persecuted. I endure nothing, have 
no cross to bear, never enjoyed life half so well, even when 
I am sick. Still, your letter was a great cordial. It gave my 
heart a spring, and even my pulse a little vivacity. I will not 
try by tvords to tell you how I feel about it. Will you allow me 
to publish it? If I should, it would not be to get myself honor. 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH PIERPONf . 125 

but to let my old Plymouth friends know that my position is not 
regarded every where as they regard it. They know your name 
there, and though your opinion would be no proof of my ortho- 
doxy, it would embarrass them in their effort at despising my anti- 
slavery character. 

I have done sympathising (condolingly) with you, in your 
Hollis street vexations. They are opportunities for which you 
should bless God. What interest they impart to your life ! How 
dull ordinary Boston pulpit-life — compared to yours, since this 
battle ! How dull would your own even be, to return to ! You 
are charged with defence of great principles. "Felix oppor 
tunitate !" Make the utmost of it. And when the history is read, 
let it not be seen that he omitted this or that glorious chance, — 
or left this or that capital point unattained. 

The Lord be with you, my dear friend, and sustain you, and 
enable you to fight eminently His battles in the earth. O, the 
misfortune of living in the stagnation of this world's peace ! And 
O for faith in Christ to enable us to fight acceptably these heart- 
stirring, heart-sustaining, soul-expanding conflicts ! 
With a heart full, I am 

Your friend and brother, 

N. P. ROGERS. 

P. S. Allow me to add in my own defence " in haste." 

Boston, 5th Apfil, 1841. 
Well, my dear Excommunicate ! I think that neither of us 
wishes or can wish any thing worse to fall upon those " who de- 
spitefully use us and persecute us," than the knowledge would 
bring upon them of all the good they are doing us, and of the 
satisfaction that 'we derive, as well as exaltation, from all that 
they do to put us down, and stop our mouths ; — stop them, but 
not with bread. Poor, dear persecutors ! — they should have 
known us better — instead of trying to thrtist us out, they should 
have bought us in. Instead of starving, they should have stuffed 
us. They should have known — 

" That Satan now is wiser than of yore, 
And tempts by making rich — not making poor." — 
11* 



12(5 CORRESPONDENCE WITH PIERPONT. 



They should have offered me an interest in a distillery of New 
England rum, and you a share in a sugar plantation. There's 
no knowing what that would have done ! You and I might then 
have been bound together by very different ties from those that bind 
us now. I might have bought your molasses for my distillery, and 
you my rum for your negro drivers ; — to screw their bowels up to 
the whipping point. Tims might you and I have been brought 
into the relation and sympathy of ordinary business friendship, 
and held together by silver chains ; and the patriarchs of the 
South and the friends of freedom at the North might, for all that 
we might have done, have met together ; and the distillers and 
the cold water men have kissed each other ; — Temperance and 
Slavery might have billed and cooed " like sucking doves," and 
mother church might have looked benignantly on, and have 
pronounced her benediction upon the bonds of matrimony that 
of the twain had made one flesh. But Pro-drunkenness and 
Pro-slavery took other counsel, and it will probably prove to them 
the counsel of Ahithophel. They thought they could bring us 
into straits — that they could hush our cryiiig, by frightening us. 
— Blood of John Rogers, of Smithfield memory ! — that any body 
should ever tliink of stopping thy current by threatening to let 
thee out of the veins of one of his descendants ! — Ah, the child- 
ren of this world have not, in this particular instance, been quite 
so wise as the children of light. 

Now, don't understand me, my friend, as meaning to say, in 
sober earnestness, that either of us could have been bribed, either 
by "rum" or "negroes," to hold his peace upon the sin of 
drunkenness and drunkard-making, slave-catching, slave-selling, 
and slave-whippmg. I only mean to suggest that if any thing 
could have done it, that might; for most men are more easily 
seduced than scared — bribed than bullied — purchased into the 
wrong than persecuted out of the right. " Who shall separate 
us from the love of Christ? Shall persecution, or nakedness, or 
famine, or the sword?" No, these things do but bind the closer 
to him all who really love him, and who labor to serve him, by 
serving their fellow-men in the spirit in which he served them. 

You ask me to let you publish my letter congratulating you 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH PIERPONT. 127 

upon your good fortune in having been excommunicated. Really, 
I don't know what I said, or what to say. I kept no copy of the 
letter, and as I wrote not to the editor, but to the man, I suspect 
that it would not make much of a figure in the columns of a 
newspaper, or do much for my " honor and glory" as a literary 
man. But, if it will do you any good, print it, though in writing 
it I may have done such violence to grammar as to have knocked 
out all the Vs of orthography, and broken every bone in syntax. 
I am not so hard pushed yet, but that I can bear a few more 
reproaches for meddling with exciting topics. But if you print, 
pray do it at once. " If it be done, 'twere well that 'twere done 
quickly ;" — for next week I am again to be brought before a 
council to answer for my overt acts of treason against the majesty 
of Rum ; and, if I am to be hanged soon, I should like to see 
all my sins of this sort set forth in black and white before the cap 
is pulled down over my eyes. But, if you print my letter, I think 
you should, also, print yours in reply. I don't know that you 
have kept a copy of yours; nor do I think you have; — so I en- 
close it, praying that you will remit it to me, for preservation, 
whether you print it or not. 

How do you sleep, my poor excommunicated friend ? Are 
you not ^orcrf every night, in vision, by papal bulls? "At the 
noise of the thunder" of the Plymouth church, have not all your 
.'ilumbers " hasted away?" Do any of your old friends Ano?/? you 
now, when you show — if you ever dare to show — yourself in 
public? When you " go out to the gate through the city, when 
you ])repare your seat in the street, do the young men see you 
and hide themselves, and do the aged arise and stand up?" Do 
your vital organs perforin their functions as they were wont ? 
Do you masticate well what little you can get to eat? or do "the 
grinders cease because they are iewV^ — O my friend, what a sad 
thing it is to be excommunicated from the orthodox church that 
is in Plymouth, New Hampshire ! But, my dear sir, you'll get 
over it — whether the church will, or not, is another question. 
Your friend and fellow-servant, 

JOHN PIERPONT. 



128 «'AILSA CRAIG." 



"AILSA CRAIG." 

[From the Herald of Freedom of April 30, 184.1.] 

This famous rock in the Irish sea we meant to have said 
something about, when we saw it, long before this time. But 
anti-slavery makes us omit and forget the wonders of the old 
world. We passed it on a trip from Scotland to Ireland. We 
left Glasgow on the 28th of July, at ten in the morning, for Dub- 
lin. William Lloyd Garrison in company, our fellow-passenger 
to the Irish capital — and Charles Lenox Remond — Wm. Smeale 
of Glasgow, a distinguished anti-slavery Quaker — and John 
Murray, of Bolein, a sweet little village down the Clyde from 
the city, a noble, Robert-Bruce-looking man, and a great abo- 
litionist, — these, and one George Thompson, were our escort 
as far as Greenock — there to take final leave of us before our 
departure for America. It was hard leaving the " bonnie" city 
of Glasgow, and especially " Albany Place," the princely resi- 
dence of our hospitable friend Mathew Lethem, who made us 
feel entirely at home there in less than three days, which was all 
the time we had for Glasgow. But we made old friends there. 
They are made by abolitionists in a day, in Scotland. We went 
aboard a steamer, and rode down the ship-thronged Clyde. Noth- 
ing can exceed its beauty below this great city. To be sure, they 
have robbed it of its native banks — and commerce has substituted 
for the green slope, a sloping wall of neat and firm stone masonry 
on each side, and straightened the once indented shores. But 
the utility of the metamorphosis is so mighty, and so palpable, — 
making this narrow stream, a far way inland, the highway for the 
commerce of one of the great ports of Britain — of a city as large 
as New York or Liverpool — where the largest ships may ride as 
freely as in the ocean, for depth of water — that it gives it a most 
imposing, singular, and interesting appearance. It is hardly 
broader than some of the widest streets of London. Our little 
steamer elbowed its way among the keels, that thronged it like 
" the full tide of human existence" along the slippery pavements 
and broad side-walks of Cheapside, or Glasgow's " Broadway," the 



"AILSA CRAIG." 129 



swarming Trongate. It was amusing, we remember, to see the 
ploughed-up water roll along the stone banks, half way up their 
slopes, in waves that coiled and convolved like the folds of the 
sea serpent. The walls were a good deal higher than the natu- 
ral shores, which were wet and low. They had filled in behii.d 
them with earth, and made high, wide, level land on either side, 
which was now covered with old verdure, and planted with stately 
trees ; — and the promenader might take his rural evening walk 
there, side by side with the winged commerce of every quarter of 
the globe, — the " white sail gliding by the tree," and the smoky 
plumage of the steamers streaming off over among the glorious 
woodlands. The gentry of the rich city had scattered their seats 
along the borders, with here and there a palace of nobility. We 
remember one of surpassing beauty, whose proprietor, John 
Murray told us as we passed it, lay in his grave in a foreign land. 
He was killed at Paris — sitting in his hotel — by a chance shot, 
in the Three Days' revolution. A colossal monument, standing 
on a high spot in the neighborhood, commemorates the event. 
Strange man, we thought, who could leave such a home as that 
for Paris, or any where else. Bat there is nothing of home about 
palaces. Home dwells in cottages. 

We made our way steadily, though not rapidly, down the 
widening channel — and came to where the " bonnie" Vale of 
Leven came down upon the Clyde from Loch Lomond, and its 
enclosing mountains, which we could descry in the misty dis- 
tance, up the Vale. All abolitionists have heard of the Vale of 
Leven — and remember its remonstrance to the women of Ame- 
rica, sent over here some four years ago, and unfurled over the 
heads of the thousands in Broadway Tabernacle at an anti-slavery 
anniversary. The four thousand Sceittish women who signed it 
dwelt in the Vale of Leven. We saw John Summerville, the 
minister who obtained their signatures. What would induce one 
of our clergy — with any " weight of influence," to be seen going 
about for women's signatures to an abolition petition ! Where 
Leven Vale meets the Clyde rises a tremendous rock, in the 
clefts of which lodges the grim old fortress of Dumbarton castle 
—famous in the history of Sir William Wallace. 



130 "AILSA CRAIG." 



We reached Greenock, which is a considerable port, — and 
landing, went with our beloved friends up to the higher parts of 
the city, to take a glance or two at the country, and bid a farewell 
to the Scottish hills. It was painful to part with them, amid the 
crowding associations that pressed upon us, and bitterer still to 
leave the dear, dear friends from whom we were then to separate. 
But we had no leisure for grieving. The steamer waited, and 
we gave and received the i^ilent parting grip, and went aboard. 
She walked away from the wharf, and through suffused eyes we 
witnessed the waving— last farewell of our beloved brothers. We 
can see them now. The eagle figure and features of Thompson, 
the trim, erect, soldierly port of the Quaker Smeale, — Murray, 
with his tall, gaunt, Scottish form and look, palpably made, as 
the stranger beholds him, for times of trouble and peril. If 
there is a revolution in Scotland within twenty years, the name 
of John Murray, of Bolein, will not be undistinguished in its 
history. And in their midst — hindly surrounded by them — stood 
the black countenance and elegant figure of Charles Remond ; — 
not behind his white companions — but in their centre, as it were — 
not crouching and retreating from their scorn and repulse, like 
the crushed colored man of the republic — but of gallant bearing, 
and fte ing evidently, in his acknowledged manhood and more 
than brotherhood — some consolation for the bereavement he was 
experiencing as his faithful friends were leaving him behind them, 
in a foreign land. 

The river soon broadened into a frith, as the Scotch call their 
bays. The mountains retreated from each other, and sails were 
to be seen here and there at anchor, in the coves and harbors of 
the wide water, near their bases. We met a naval horse-race on 
the frith of eight beautiful little vessels, at the very top of their 
speed. They were running the heats — in a wide circle, and 
leaning down hard to the sea — close on each other's heels ; all 
sail crowded, they made the water foam white about their prows. 
It was quite an animating sight, with none of the painful sensa- 
tion at seeing poor quadruped horses scourged and pressed beyond 
their powers. There was no distress or faltering of icind in 
these graceful little racers, as they swept the frith of Clyde. 



"AILSA CRAIG." 131 



A Mr. McTear had come aboard the steamer at Greenock, for 
Dublin. He was a Greenock merchant. We were talking with 
him on the deck when we spied a conical rock, as it seemed, 
rising out of the water some distance ahead. It appeared through 
the thin mists like a hay-stack, and about as large. We spoke 
of it to Mr. McTear, and he told us it was Ailsa Craig. We re- 
membered mention of it by Scott in the Lord of the Isles, where 
he calls it rock instead of craig — in the mouth of Robert Bruce — 

" Lord of the Isles ! my trust in thee 
Is firm as Ailsa rock." 

We had supposed it was in the Forth, on the other side of 
Scotland. As we were looking at it, Mr. McTear asked us to 
guess the distance to it. Strangers, he said, were apt greatly to 
mistake the distance. We looked at the rock along the inter- 
vening water. We could get no aid from the shores, which were 
at great distance — quite out of sight on one hand. We sup- 
posed, of course, we should underrate the distance. So we 
stretched it liberally, as we thought, and guessed two miles, though 
it did not look like that distance. " You have made the com- 
mon mistake," said Mr. McTear ; " it is over twenty." We 
could hardly credit it ; but he told us we should see it was so, — 
for we would be over two hours getting to it, and were going at 
ten knots. And over two hours it was ; and such was the decep- 
tive character of the way, that when we thought we were com- 
ing right upon it, and wanting our friend Garrison, who was 
asleep below, to have a sight at it, we went down and told him to 
hurry up and see " Ailsa rock" — it proved, to the amazement of 
us both, that we were then nearly ten miles from it. And the 
little prominence, that looked so like a hay-stack, or a hay-cock, 
when we descried it first, grew, as we neared it, a mighty moun- 
tain — nine hundred and eighty feet high — rising abruptly out of 
the sea, and two miles about the base. It Wcis a naked rock. A 
little level space projected on one side, with a small house on it. 
We could not conjecture the use of a habitation there. The 
captain of the steamer said it was the governor's house. We 
asked him what a governor could do there. " Take care of the 



l:^> "AILSA CRAIC." 



birds," ho ropliod ; " luul he pays the marquis of Ailsa, tlic priv 
prioti^r, who takes his title irom the Craisj, d'CA) rent, for his privi- 
looo of taking them." "NVhat sort of birds I we asked him. " Sea- 
fowl of all sorts." he said. " Thev inhabit the Craig; andye'Ihnay 
be see luunbers o( tliem. Thev are quito numerous. The marquis 
has threatened prosecution if people tire upon tlie Craig from the 
vessels. They have been in the habit oi' tiring to ahirm the birds, 
to see them tly." lie had been himself governor of the Craig, he 
said, some years betore, anil had great sport and some danger in 
killing the birds. His way of killing them was with a club : and 
he told us how many thousand, we dare not say how many, he 
had killed in a single day, of a famous kind of goose. He had 
let himself down to a quarter of the clitVs where they haunted, to 
get the young and eggs ; and the old ones attacked him, and he 
fought them with his club, till he was covert-d with blood — theirs 
and his own. He had a good mind, he said, to give them one 
gun — ^just to let us see them tly, as we were strangers. As he 
had been the marquis' governor, he said, he would venture that 
he would overlook it in him. He ordered his boy to bring the 
musket. The boy returned and said it was left behind at Glas- 
gow. "Load up the swivel then," said the captain; "it will be 
idl the better. It will make quite a tlight, ye'll find. — Load her 
up pretty well."' 

The steamer meanwhile kept nearing the giant Craig, which 
was a bare rock from summit to the sea. and all of a dull chalky 
whiteness, occasioned, as the captain said, by the excrement of 
the birds. '^^ e saw caves in the sides of the mountain, and 
down by the water ; the retreats, our informant told us, in former 
limes, of the snmgglers, who used to frequent the Craig, ;md carry 
on an extensive trade Irom these places of concealment. ^Ve 
had got so near as to see the white birds tlitting across the black 
entrances of the caverns, like bees about the hive. With the 
spy-glass we could see them distinctly, and in very considerable 
numbers, and at length approached so that we could see them 
on the ledges all over the sides of the mountain. "We had passed 
the skirt of the Craig, and were within a half mile, or less, of 
Its base. With the glass we could now see the entire mountain 



"AILSA CRAIG." 133 



aide peopled vvitli the sea-fowl, and could hear their whimpering, 
household cry, as they moved about, or nestled in domestic snug- 
ness on the ten thousand ledges. The air, too, about the preci- 
pices seemed to be alive with them. Still we had not the slightest 
conception of their frightful multitude. We got about against 
the centre of the mountain, when the swivel was fired. The 
.shot went point blank against it, and struck the stupendous pre- 
cipice a.s from top to bottom with a reverberation like the dis- 
charge of a hundred cannon. And what a sight followed ! They 
ro.se up from that mountain — the countless myriads and millions 
of sea-birds — in a universal, overwhelming cloud that covered 
the whole heavens, and their cry was like the cry of an alarmed 
nation. Up they went — millions upon millions — ascending like 
the smoke of a furnace — countless as the sands on the sea shore — 
awful, dreadful for multitude, as if the whole mountain were dis- 
solving into life and light, and, with an unearthly kind of lament, 
took up their line of march in every direction off to sea. The 
sight startled the people on board the steamer, who had often 
witnessed it before, and for some minutes there ensued a general 
silence. For our own part, we were quite amazed and overawed 
at the spectacle. We had seen nothing like it ever before. We 
had seen White Mountain Notches and Niagara Falls, in our own 
land, and the vastness of the wide and deep ocean, which was 
then separating us from it. We had' seen something of art's 
magnificence in the old world, " its cloud-capt towers, its gor- 
geous palaces and solemn temples," but we had never witnessed 
sublimity to be compared to that rising of sea-birds from Ailsa 
Craig. They were of countless varieties, in kind and size, from 
the largest goose to the smallest marsh-bird — and of every con- 
ceivable variety of dismal note. Off they moved, in wild and 
alarmed rout, like a people going into exile — filling the air, far 
and wide, with their reproachful lament at the wanton cruelty 
that had broken them up and driven them into captivity. We 
really felt remorse at it, and the thought might have occurred to 
us, how easy it would have been for them, if they had known 
that the little smoking speck that was laboring along the sea sur- 
12 



134 "AILSA CRAIG.' 



face beneath them, had been the cause of their banishment, to 
have settled down upon it and ingulfed it out of sight forever. 

We felt astonished that we had never before heard of this 
wonderful haunt of sea-fowl, and that no one had ever loritten a 
hook upon it. It struck us, as really one of " the wonders of 
the world." And not us alone ; others, not at all given to the 
marvellous, declared that it surpassed every thing they had ever 
before witnessed. We supposed the mountain must have been 
quite deserted, from the myriads that had flown away ; but lifting 
the glass to it, as we were leaving its border, we were appalled to 
find it still alive with the myriads left behind. They kept leaving 
and leaving, until our steamer had got far on beyond the Craig, 
and till we could no longer discern their departure with the tele- 
scope ; and it was miles off into the dusky Irish sea, before we 
saw the ebbing of their mighty movement, and that they were 
beginning to return. We felt relieved to see them going back. 
It had scarcely occurred to us in our surprise, that they were not 
leaving their native cliffs forever. Slowly and sadly they seemed 
to return, — while the eye sought in vain to ken the outskirts of 
their mighty caravan. And Ailsa Craig had sunk far into our 
rear, and quite sensibly diminished in the distance, before the 
rearmost of the feathered host had disappeared from our sight. 

The excitement occasioned us considerable depression of spir- 
its, from which we were not entirely relieved until night came 
down upon the St. George's channel, and the protracted northern 
twilight could no longer disclose objects to our wearied vision. 
Then, after refreshing ourselves with some substantial confec- 
tionary, with which dear George Thompson had kindly stuffed 
our pockets from a shop at Greenock, before leaving the " land 
of cakes," our beloved fellow-passenger and ourself, afler sundry 
fond remembrances of the other side the ocean, some expecta- 
tions of next day's greetings in Dublin, and some grateful sense, 
as we trust, of the Goodness that had not forgotten us amid all 
our dangers by sea and land, — we forgot what we had seen, and 
whereabouts we were, in the arms of oblivious sleep. 

The next morning the sun rose clear upon the glassy sea, and 
revealed to us the hills and mists of old Ireland, towards which 



EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM BOSTON. 135 

we joyously sped, entering the beautiful bay of Dublin, — and at ten 
o'clock, just twenty-four hours from our embarking on the Clyde, 
we stepped ashore on the banks of the Liifey, in the Irish capi- 
tal. We found Irish and American friends in prompt waiting 
for us at the landing, and in a few moments were bag and bag- 
gage mounted on that out-of-door, non-descript vehicle, the Bian' 
Car, and full gallop for 161 Great Brunswick street, the elegant 
and hearty home of Richard and Hannah Webb. 



EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM BOSTON. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of May 21, 1841.] 

My dear J. R. F. 

I meant to give you something for last week's Herald, bear- 
ing date Philadelphia or New York, but had so much to do with 
anti-slavery at the first city, and so poor health at the latter, much 
of the time I passed there, that I could write nothing. I am 
now laid up " in ordinary" of an east-wind, late-spring cold, at 
the home of our fast anti-slavery friend Francis Jackson, almost 
under the eaves of Pierpont's meeting-house, — two localities not 
unworthy anti-slavery remembrance. I am in the room which 
was thrown open to the mob-routed women in 1835, when the 
calm-minded proprietor gave them public invitation to hold their 
meeting in his house ; telling them if the mob, then in posses- 
sion of the city, tore it down, why, then he would endeavor to 
build another. In this room they held their adjourned meeting, 
while mobocracy howled along the street. Harriet Martineau 
was present, and, amid the tempest, gave in her public adhesion 
to the anti-slavery cause. The room inspires my heart, but 
cannot give clearness or vivacity to the stupified head, so that I 
might give you something of the Philadelphia and New York 
meetings. 

I reached Philadelphia, Thursday, at 4, P. M., (6th inst.) in 
twenty-four hours from Boston, having passed the night on the 
Sound aboard the New York, a swift and elegant steamer which 



136 PHILADELPHIA. 



brought us from Norwich, Conn., to the great commercial Baby- 
lon, at 7 in the morning. We crossed the Hudson, and entered 
the cars, and made a tedious and most uninteresting jaunt " through 
the Jerseys," as dull as Washington's retreat, and nearly as slow. 
We passed the village of Trenton, near, I suppose, where the 
turning-point engagement of the revolution was fought ; and 
along the banks of the Delaware, of which that celebrated pas- 
sage was made by our .frost-bitten remnant of an army. Once 
these localities would have awakened enthusiastic feelings, but 
they enkindled nothing of the kind now, as I thought of the 
bloody purpose of those celebrated movements, and how with all 
the boast of the revolution, Liberty had never set foot upon the 
continent which was delivered by it ; and we were then on the 
way to an anti-slavery meeting in the dishonored city on its banks, 
one of whose most beautiful edifices had been burnt by the peo- 
ple to ashes because it had been consecrated to liberty of speech. 
The Delaware rolls sullenly and silently by it without a murmur 
of indignation, fresh as its waters come from the field of Tren- 
ton and the wintry passage of Washington. That passage and 
that field were in vain. They have got to be repeated, but not 
in military array. It is moral power now led against the Hessian 
myrmidons of slavery which storms its barriers and crosses its 
rivers. 

The approach to Philadelphia down the Delaware is exceed- 
ingly pleasant. We passed the picturesque chateau of Joseph 
Bonaparte on its banks, at Bordentown. It has a beautiful for- 
eign look ; but you can't forget that its immense cost was wrung 
out of laboring poor, who have not where to lay their heads. 
The Lord speed the day when no more of these proud abodes 
shall be erected on the earth — when, instead of the castle or the 
palace usurping miles of solitary green, happy, equal humanity 
shall have planted its dear domestic homes along " every rood of 
ground." 

* # * * **#* 

The city is inland — remote from the sea, its tempests and 
surges, and embosomed between two quiet rivers. The people 
are surgeless and untempestuous in mood and demeanor, and far 



PHILADELPHIA. 137 



remote from the ebb and flow, wind and wave, and agitation of 
the New England North. The city is a level. The people are 
not mountainous. The streets of the city are all at right angles 
and in parallels, and the habitations lie in squares. There seem 
to be few curves or diagonals in the ways of the people. The 
city is plainly but richly built. There is an unostentatious, but 
palpable opulence in the tall palaces, with their white window- 
shutters, and their marble step flights at every door. They go 
up to their thresholds over the white Italian marble. — And there 
is no ruffling or furhelowing in the uniform of the plain-c\K^ 
people, but their material is as rich as a Jew. The city has all 
the tidiness and sweet cleanliness of a Canterbury Shaker vil- 
lage. The streets undergo continual ablution, and the broad 
brick side-walks look damp, cool, and refreshing, as if just wet 
with a thunder-shower. And you would think, to see the peo- 
ple, that they are all fresh from the bath. The city has the 
inestimable blessing of water as well as air. It is in this particu- 
lar highly favored among cities. It does not have to depend on 
the rain it may catch in decaying cisterns, or on wells sunk in 
its own foundations of doubtful purity. Fairmount sheds the 
water upon it, from its verdant summit in the neighborhood, in 
supply as copious and unfailing as the Schuylkill, and pure as the 
rills that feed that noble river from the Blue Ridge. Fairmount 
waters every street of the city, and every dwelling, from base- 
ment to loftiest attic. The abundance is wonderful. It is *' wa- 
ter — water — every where." And the people riot in it. If they 
were pagans, they would worship it. Water would be their god; 
with his Olympus on the top of Fairmount, and his haunt up the 
bed of the Schuylkill ; or perhaps he would himself be that pro- 
pitious river. The city revels in perpetual ablution, and it " keeps 
clean the out-side." But with all their water power, they could 
not, it seems, put out the conflagration of the " Pennsylvania 
Hall." That was a fire the Fairmount fluid could not quench. 
The "fire-stained" ruin stands there in unaccountable contrast 
with the jMzeMooking habitations about it. 
12* 



138 MEETINGS AT NEW YORK. 

MEETINGS AT NEW YORK. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of June 4, 1841.] 

Some of these were of a deeply interesting character, and 
brought out some of the humblest of the people to speak, as well 
as to feel. Among others, a woman past middle life, of the name 
of Harriet Lloyd. Pledges and contributions were making, 
as she cast into the humble treasury her quarter of a dollar, and 
accompanied the deposit with a few remarks. But the spirit of 
the meeting waxing powerful, and the duty of liberality being 
urged by the various speakers, and in order to that, the duty of 
economy in expenditures, and of sparing contributions in behalf 
of other causes — the causes of sect and party — Harriet Lloyd 
rose again, and declared she could not keep from speaking in 
such a meeting as that. She could understand, she said, the 
claims of the cause — she could feel the claims of the slave, for 
she had been a slave. She knew what the slave whip meant. 
This was the meeting, she said, the slave would go to, and this the 
society his heart would be in. She had given what she had. She 
meant to earn more and give it. She meant to save the money 
she had been in the habit of giving otherwheres. She was a 
Methodist, she said, and had given her money there — but she 
should give it there no more. This was the cause of God's poor, 
and she should give her money, what little she could get, here. 
She had no confidence in the other societies. They were societies 
where a woman was not allowed to speak her heart for the slave. 
They were afraid of hearing women. She had no confidence in 
men who rated women like that. They were no friends of the 
slave. They did not hold woman any higher than slaves. They 
held her as a sort of beast of burden. They thought no higher 
of her than Balaam did of the ass that carried him, and seemed 
as 'fraid to have her speak, and to wonder as much to hear her. 
But after all, she said, Balaam was not so much wiser than the 
ass. She could see as far as he could. She see the angel coming 
before he did, and tried to make him see it, and he could not, 
and struck her for it. And he did not see the angel at all, till 



MEETINGS AT NEW YORK. 139 

she crushed his foot against the wall ; and if she could not have 
seen better than he, they would have gone on till they met the 
angel, and what would have become of them then ! ! O, no, 
she exclaimed, as she threw herself into a most expressive at- 
titude, and with the finest natural gestures, let the women speak ! 
— they must speak, and must be heard. She felt they must. She 
knew what was wanted, for she had been a slave ! President 
Tappan, if he had been present, might have called the noble 
woman to order, as John T. Norton did Abby Kelly, at the Con- 
necticut meeting the other day. But she would have scorned the 
call. Her great soul was up, and she would instantly have put 
to shame any man narrow enough to interrupt the current of her 
free speech. The plea of usage would have been a feeble bar- 
rier before her. We wish our heartless clergy could have heard 
her. It would have shamed some of them out of their heart- 
lessness. 

Abby Kelly spoke greatly and generously at the meeting. They 
owed much of their interest and success to her. The hearts of 
brethren were faltering. Walkers by sight, they were wavering 
at the gloomy prospect of the cause, and were counseling dis- 
couragement and retreat. This noble-hearted woman, full of 
faith, scattered their pusillanimous counsels and fears to the 
wind, and restored heart and courage to the meeting, and ample 
resources to carry on our movement were at once opened and 
realized. 

But she is a woman. Above all, she is an unreverend woman. 
She has had no theological education, and " it is a shame for a 
woman to speak in" a tabernacle. 

But how much better she spoke than men ! — how much clearer ! 
With how much more heart and feeling ! How much more deeply 
she remembered the bondman, and how much less deeply she 
remembered herself! 

Sarah Pugh, of Philadelphia, too, spoke on the question of 
funds, and shame though it was for her to speak, the shame we 
felt was at the vastly more sense she showed than her brethren, 
and the deeper interest she manifested than they, in the cause of 
bleeding humanity. Her brief speech was full of point and force. 



140 ISAAC T HOPPER. 



The nfveri?ud brother — such a one. could not have said in a half 
daj what she did in a minute. He c^.uUd not m a day. He 
could not at all. Yet it is an honor tbi him to sj>eak. He is 
delighteU soIem»Ijt at his own oracular tones. And for her — it is 
a shame and a sin : a departure from spheres and the like. Col- 
ored uiea spoke — not the reverend brethren; they have with- 
drawn in New York from our movement. It is a little too humble 
an adair for their cloth. David Ruggles was there, and Thomas 
Van Reusellear. and James Hudson, with his red shirt bosom. 
These could speak for humanity — ftu they felt for it. And they 
spoke with strong edect. We doubt if New York has ever wit- 
nessed a meeting of deeper feeling or more faithful and devoted 
spirit. Every thing went on harmoniously, and terminated satis- 
factorily, and the friends separated for the year's campaign, fiill 
of heart and zeal. 



* TALES OF OPPRESSION." 
[From the Herald oT Freedom of June ♦. IS41.] 

Wk have published numbers of these interesting narratives 
from lime to time, from the National Anti-Slavery Standard. 
Our readers find one of them cm the last page of to-day. Isaac 
T. Hopper, the author of them, is a very remarkable man. He 
resides in the city of New York — is one of the executive com- 
jnittee of the American Aati-SIaverv society, and is connected 
with the Anti-Slavery office, in the city. He is a member of the 
society of Friends, unless they have disatcned him. They were 
"taking steps" alter him. when we were in the city recently, at 
the national meetings. The heresy they are himting him for, is 
his connection with the national anti-slavery paper. For this, 
they are seeking to cast him out of their broad-itrimnKd syna- 
ec^e. We trust they will succeed. — for Isaac T. Hopper is too 
much of a working christian to be a technical Friend, and too 
much of a max to be a Quaker. The traces of sect are not 
made for limbs like his. 



ISAAC T. HOPPER. Hi 



W(t liJid the pleasure of staying at his and his wife's hospitable 
home wliile we attended the national anniversary. We had 
heard of hirn as an extraordinary man in character and appear- 
ance, and were specially curious to see him for his reputed re- 
semlilance to Napoleon Bonaparte. And he doen indeed resemble 
him. We met with one of his daughters at Philadelphia bcfwe 
seeing him, and we at once apprehended she was a relative of his, 
from lier Bonapartean features, and so told her on being introduced 
to her. Joseph Bonaparte is said to have remarked, on seeing 
Friend Ilojjper, that he so resembled the Emperor, that with his 
liiiiform on, he would be mistaken for him by bis own household. 
lie is about seventy years of age, but has all the activity and 
vivacity of healthy middle life. His eagle " eye is not dimmed, 
nor his natural force abated." There is not a gray appearance 
in his full head of hair, and his form is round and full, and mus- 
cular as in the prime of life. He wonderfully resembles the 
likenesses we have seen of Napoleon. The high, aquiline nose, 
the, flaming eye, the adamantimi-m'AxhXQ forehead, the delicate, 
firm mouth, the same uuder-size and peculiar form, the stooping 
shoulder, neck, and singular set of the head, so distinguished in 
all the statues and busts of " The Little Corporal." And he 
speaks like him, and moves like him. Rapid, clear, sententious 
in his conversati<Mi, without a rej)etition, or .spare word — or any 
hesitancy of thought or speech. We heard him talk a good deal, 
and all he said was as trim and fit for the press, as the " Tales 
of Oppression," — which, by the by, we understand he narrates 
from memory, and without any reference to record, except the 
records made on his vivid recollection by the events themselves. 
If he had been bred a warrior, he would have been another Bona- 
parte. But he has lived a Quaker, with the exception that he 
has been by no means "quiet" — as the baffled kidnapper and the 
rescued slave could te.stify. lie has been a perpetual " committee 
of vigilance," ever since the day mentioned in the number of 
his " tales" we to-day publish. The fugitive slaves know him as 
well as they know the North Star, and the man-hunters hate him 
!is cordially as they do that constant lamp and guide-board to the 
ptwr bond-man's city of refuge. He has been the Negro's 



142 ISAAC T. HOPPER. 



Friend ; and now the broad-brimmed corporation, among whom 
he has strangely lingered to this late period of his life, are dogging 
his footsteps with the blood-hounds of sect. If they overtake 
him, wo to ihem. They will find their dogships in the grasp of 
the Numidian lion. Yet they can " cut him off." They can vote 
him " guilty of breach of solemn covenant." But if they do, he 
will give the world another number of his " Tales of Oppression." 
They had better beware, though we hope they will not. 

His son-in-law, James S. Gibbons, another indefatigable friend 
of the slave, is undergoing the same " labor," and for the same 
cause — to wit, undue fidelity to Christ. 

They are demurely setting the excommunicatory trap to catch 
him. Whether they make it out of texts in the xviii of Matthew, 
or not, we don't know. The sects all agree, we believe, in that 
perversion. We apprehend they will become more friendly than 
they have been. The Quakers have been hung and persecuted 
a good deal in times past ; but now they are beginning to ape 
their solemn persecutors in " cutting off" their more conscientious 
members — amputating them to save the sound and healthful and 
active body, and they will find sympathy and respect, and be 
admitted into the brotherhood of christians. 

The corporation goes by the name, we believe, of Rose Street, 
or Grace Street, meeting. They had threatened Charles Ma- 
RiOT, another most exemplary member — but expected he would 
decline a re-election to the offensive committeeship with Friends 
Hopper and Gibbons. He has not declined it, and we heard 
before leaving the city that the gay brotherhood had began to 
" step" in regard to him. 

O what mummery and what a mockery of the christian pro^ 
fession ! Will this age see men delivered from it — or are they 
irremediably blinded? 



MARY CLARK. 143 



MARY CLARK. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of June 4, 1811.] 

We have not been entirely sensible of the departure from this 
little scene of care and turmoil, of this beloved friend, till our 
return home from the anti-slavery journey on which we first heard 
news of her death. We realize it now, and the more sensibly as 
our annual meeting is transpiring ; and she is no longer to be 
seen animating it by her presence, and encouraging it by her 
counsels. Mary Clark is then really dead. We are to meet her 
no more till we also shall have put off this tabernacle of clay. 
She was a most devoted abolitionist while here among us. Does 
she now regret it, does any one think, who disesteemed her for it 
in her life-time ? Will any of her surviving friends, who perhaps 
lamented the perversion of her fine powers to so despised and 
degraded a cause, and who marveled at her want of discretion 
and taste, will they lament it now in her behalf — or even in their 
own? No — we think not. Anti-slavery seems appropriate 
enough to those who have gone to commingle in the world of 
retribution, — however ill advised to sojourners here. It is good 
for those appearing at the judgment-seat of Christ. " Inasmuch 
as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it 
unto me," is of momentous value at the final tribunal. God be 
praised that it is, as we trust, the portion of our dear departed 
sister. She would not exchange it for any thing within the scope 
of imagination to conceive. If she could speak to survivors, 
would she check us in our zeal, or would she not hasten us to 
greater activity ? Would she not admonish us of our tardiness 
and torpor ? Doubtless she would. And let us take the admo- 
nition. She rests from her tireless labors. She did not pause in 
them for sickness. She does in death. The sick bed was not 
to her a place of relaxation. She was active, while she was lan- 
guishing there. In death she reposes ; but to us she still speaks. 
All her example pleads loudly that we gird ourselves anew to our 
work, while her exit warns us that a period to our labors is at 
hand, and her absence from the field adds weight to the share of 



144 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. 

work remaining on each and all of us. Let us give heed to her 
example and to her empty place. 

We had thought to say something of her character ; but that 
has been already beautifully sketched by a pen of truer delinea- 
tion and nicer touch than ours — the pen of one whose bereave- 
ment her own fine pen had but recently depicted, and the beloved 
object of whose smitten affection she has now joined, no doubt, 
where bereavement can no more enter, neither sorrow nor sigh- 
ing, and where tears are wiped away forever from every eye. The 
hearts of the anti-slavery women of Concord will forever, while 
they beat, bear record of her zeal, her worth, and her exceeding 
ability in the great cause they hold so dearly. Anti-slavery 
women and men elsewhere will deeply appreciate her great ser- 
vices and their great loss. Death is releasing our champions 
from service. Let it not find any of us with his work unfinished. 
The miserable slave still pines in his doleful prison-house. His 
more miserable and guilty master is still reeking in innocent 
blood. And the still guiltier professed christian community is 
hardening itself in opposition to our holy enterprise, and turning 
its adder-ear against the bitter cry of humanity. 



THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of June 11, 1841.] 

Such is their importance in our estimation and that of judi- 
cious friends about us, that we give them again to our readers, 
in hope that they may be scattered largely among the people. 
The estimation in which anti-slavery holds the mercenary and 
recreant clergy, we lay before the people, and ask them to review 
it with the Bible in their right hand, and their honest, impartial 
observations on the ranks we condemn. If we charge them truly, 
we charge the people, in the name of God, to rise and shake 
themselves free of these spiritual nightmares. 

Anti-slavery demands the ear of this people to the wail of the 
plantation slave — he is a slave. The people are made his ensla- 



PROCEEDLNGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. 145 

vers by the itifluences which spell-bind them. He cries to them 
for help, and if they could hear him, they would help him. The 
clergy muffle the ear of the country, that it cannot hear. The 
slave system has shot its roots and its fangs throughout the eccle- 
siastical polity of the land. The roots of the two systems are 
interwoven and intertwined with each other like heart-strings. 
They are allied to each other with the inseparable unity of mar- 
riage. They twain are one flesh. They are not twin — they are 
one. Disturbance of one is death to the other. Try it. Touch 
slavery, and the church winces as if her eye-ball was touched. 
Wound slavery, and the church flounces like a harpooned whale. 
Verily, the great mass of the religious profession of the land is 
saturated with the blood of the slave. It is tinged through with 
it. And the mass of the clergy are what anti-slavery calls them 
at her annual meeting in New Hampshire in 1841 — " a vast 
BROTHERHOOD OF THIEVES !" Objection will be made to the epi- 
thet thieves. In one sense it is objectionable. It is not legally 
heinous enough to set forth their crime. Theft is a secret taking. 
Slavery takes openly and shamelessly. It is robbery rather. But 
it lacks the dignity of robbery. The robber encounters danger, 
and displays intrepidity and some hardiness of character. The 
slaveholder betrays the meanness of the thief He steals the 
helpless. He plunders the defenceless and the weak. He preys 
upon the unresisting and submissive, who submit beyond all 
human endurance ; or if they are ever goaded to resistance, it 
is by transcendent outrage and a wantonness that is super- 
natural. It is done upon the helpless mass that lay weltering 
in the South. The solemn clergy of the land are united in its 
countenance and support. The efforts that would reach that 
mass and disenthrall it, they universally frown upon, with excep- 
tions so few, that they are imperceptible. The few seeming 
exceptions are but a varioloid type of pro-slavery. The ex- 
ceeding few that would be real exceptions, are fast ceasing to 
be of the brotherhood at all. It is casting them out as fast as 
it discovers them, and their own free action for enslaved human- 
ity would itself work them out. The vast brotherhood of the 
clergy is in fellowship with the slave system or with its fellow- 
13 



146 TREES. 

shippers. If any of its number dare renounce direct fellowship, 
under the audacious pressure of the abolitionists, they are obliged 
to counteract it and more, by indirect fellowship. They are 
obliged to succumb to sect and to denomination, and these go all 
lengths for the great human felony. Of this more fully here- 
after 



TREES. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Aug. 6, 1841.] 

We feel strongly inclined, in this season of long drought and 
glaring sunshine, to pay a tribute to the magnificent trees, which 
embosom and adorn the otherwise unsightly little capital of 
New Hampshire, and, to the eye of the observer at a distance, 
multiply its dwellings, and augment its dimensions to the appear- 
ance of a small city. We know no country village this side the 
water better off than this, on the score of shade, not excepting 
old Worcester, Mass., with all its stately button-woods. And 
what a glorious object is a Tree ! How magnificent a forest of 
them, on the boundless plain, or the mighty hill-side ! And the 
single tree — there is scarcely its match for beauty among unin- 
telligent objects on the face of the earth. It is surpassed perhaps 
only by him who walks among them in living and thinking grace 
and beauty. " In form," though not in " moving," like him, the 
tree, how "expre.ss and admirable!" The solitary tree — or the 
row — or group, planted by human hands, or spared by them from 
ordinary extermination, near the abodes of men. The thick- 
topped maple, with its wholesome looking foliage and impervious 
boughs, in whose close and dark recesses the hang-bird sings her 
" wood-note wild," in the hot summer noon. The lofty, clear- 
limbed, open-boughed button-wood — with its dainty leaf, its 
scarred trunk, and excoriated branches. And the elm, the patri- 
arch of the family of shade ; — the majestic, the umbrageous, the 
antlered elm. We remember one at this moment — in sight from 
our old home on the banks of the Pemigewassett. We have seen 



TREES. 147 

larger, but never one of such perfect symmetry and beauty. It 
stood just across that cold stream, near the bridge " Fayette" — 
by the road side — on the margin of the wide interval. " One 
among thousand" it stood of the multitudes which the taste of 
its early proprietor had left dispersed about on the broad land- 
scape. It stood upon the ground as lightly as though it " rose 
in dance ; " — and its full top bending over toward the ground on 
every side with the dignity of the forest-tree and all the grace of 
the weeping-willow. You could gaze upon it for hours. It was 
the beautiful handy-work and architecture of God, on which the 
eye of man never tires, but always looks with refreshing and 
delight. We remember a clump of white pines, too — right 
opposite on thfe other side the stream ; — tall mast pines — of the 
primitive woods — aborigines. We seem to hear their evening 
murmur, mingled with the Jlow of the rapids that hurried by their 
foot. How they came to be left there, we can hardly imagine. 
They are on the verge of the village, and must have stood there 
since long before the settlement of the town, and have survived 
the axes of half a dozen hewing and haching generations. We 
remember a crane lighting down on to the tip top of one of the 
tallest of them, one day at sunset. 

But the shade trees of Concord — we sat down to pay a hasty 
tribute to them. They are every thing to this stirring little region 
of taverns and politics and printing offices. They hide its archi- 
tectural deformities of State House, Court House, State Prison, 
sectarian pagodas, and dilapidated distillery, beautiful in its 
ruins. Some of the others would make pretty ruins. We trust 
they will speedily be left to clothe themselves in the interesting 
garment of dilapidation, tenanted by the moles and the bats. To 
us, who do not deal in any of the commodities vended at the 
ware-houses aforesaid, and to whom residence in Concord might 
otherwise be irksome, there is relief and reconciliation in its 
glorious trees. The traveler would linger as he entered the village 
from the northward, under the venerable elms that overshadow 
the ancient Walker seat, and its neighboring dwellings, and the 
compact and refreshing maples, that front the respectable old resi- 
dence of the late worthy Deacon Kimball. Going on, he would 



148 TREES. 

halt by Hoit's tavern ; — not to refresh himself with the rum that 
we are sorry to learn continues to be sold there, in this day of 
light and reform, when the ditch drunkards are every where rising 
from the gutter, in the majesty of awakened human nature, and 
at the bugle call of Hawkins are kindling up the torch of refor- 
mation about the benighted meeting-houses of the land. It is a 
shame to keep a rum tavern in the presence of these noble men, 
and their anxious wives and children. Not to drink rum would 
the traveler pause here — who has taste enough to look at a tree, 
but to gaze upward at the peerless elms that front that tavern. 
They are remarkably lively and spirited trees, and of a peculiar 
delicacy of twig. He would uncover his head, and pass slowly 
down the spacious street, quite o'er-arched in sundry places with 
the umbrageous elm boughs that spring in arches from either 
side until you come below the Merrimack County Bank, whose 
comeliness of structure is no wise diminished to the eye by the 
tree tops, a superb row of which right against it hide it from the 
sight. We hardly know a patch of public way so favored with 
shade at all hours of the day, as this. It greatly enhances the 
value of the residences there. Advancing, you pass an exceed- 
ingly graceful body of elms before the Dr. Green house, down 
the wide, exposed, and dusty Main Street, on one side of the 
way, and the Corinthian pile on the other — the temple of justice, 
of christian forbearance, and " forgiveness of debtors," for our 
county of Merrimack. You come next to where maple-decked 
Centre Street comes down against the old respectable Mrs. 
Stickney house, with its three magnificent elms topping out in 
one — a form they have assumed from standing together and by 
themselves alone. Proceeding on, you pause to contemplate with 
pleasure and regret the thrifty grove springing in the State House 
yard — pleasure at the number and beauty of the trees, and regret 
perchance at the unnatural straightness in which they are planted. 
Half the number, naturally disposed, as the English plant their 
parks — would furnish twice the ornament to the cold legislative 
establishment that stands up in Yankee stiffness in the midst of 
them. There stands the Statute Factory, the Government House, 
the Politics Market, the fountain of annual, perennial, and 'per- 



TREES. 149 

petual legislation ; — where they repeal or modify this year, what 
they enacted or amended last, — and enact this year what they will 
modify next, and repeid the year after, under the increasing and 
varying light of the age, and at the tune of sixty thousand dollars 
a year. Two or three hundred o6/c-bodied citizens of New 
Hampshire, capable of great usefulness at their respective homes, 
agonize their minds here some thirty days of each revolving 
year, in enactments, modifications, and abrogations of militia 
law, — of cat, fox, and crow bounty legislation, and pickerel pro- 
tection, and in bandying, from party to party, democratic assever- 
ations ; each out-hcroding the other, in acknowledgment of the 
sovereignty of the laborers at home, who are earning the sixty 
thousand dollars, with indurated hand and sweaty forehead. Six- 
ty thousand dollars, per annum, of New Hampshire-earned mon- 
ey ! — Those must be true lovers of the ivorking pcoplcy who will 
thus spend it ! All spent in perpetual-motion-tinkering at the 
old statute book, — at law-making, to enforce people to go straight 
in the path of justice. With what success, ask yonder hideous 
prison, and its caterer, yon comely Court House ! O that the 
money were spent by the people in improving their beloved 
liomes, and in cultivating their rude homesteads! — rude, ragged 
and barren now, because they must maintain politics. O that it 
were laid out in shading the highway with beauteous trees ! The 
cost of this yearly mangling of the law book would prepare a 
complete road for every traveled rod of New Hampshire, if not 
of New England — and adorn it, both sides, with shady trees. It 
is squandered on counterfeit patriotism. One young button- 
wood in the north-east corner of State House yard is, in our eye, 
worth more than the laws of all June session. It is a most beau- 
tiful tree — a model of its species. State Street, in rear of this 
concern, is well planted with shades, almost its entire length ; 
but they are small yet. There'are several clusters of charming 
young button-woods, — particularly about the houses where George 
Hough and Jacob B. Moore formerly lived, once printers and 
editors in Concord. 

Passing down Main street from the State House, you find one 
wing of Leach's Buildings fronted with four princely elms ; — the 
13* 



150 TREES. 

group adopting the form, at top, of a single tree of giant size. 
Farther on, another co-partner si lip of elms, three in number, of 
towering height, and great amplitude of shade, showing finely as 
you come down " Hopkinton road," — and nearly opposite that 
great homely edifice called the " South Church." This great 
ecclesiastical barn stands there askew at the corner of two streets ; 
all shadeless and naked, in extreme architectural deformity, and 
as ugly as Juggernaut. It is mounted upon one story of the same 
materials as compose the State Prison. It is dedicated, however, 
and has become an object of worship. About the last we knew 
of it, it was refused by Thomas Chadbourne and others, to 
Temperance and Anti-Slavery conventions, in September, 1840. 
Stepping up Hopkinton road, to the fine seat of late W. A. Kent, 
you come under an old stag-horned elm, that spreads out its 
antlers as broadly almost as Liberty tree on Boston common, — 
with sundry fine junior elms in its neighborhood. Casting the 
eye up to the corner of Green and Pleasant streets, it lights upon 
the handsomest button-wood in all the region, — a real gem of a 
tree. A corps of youthful maples, — as you turn down Main 
street again, grow before the former dwelling of our late fellow- 
townsman and anti-slavery friend, William Gault. Their tops 
are as round, thick and compact as so many cabbage heads. We 
pass without notice now, the king row of elms in Concord, and in 
New England, to go down and take a view about the famous old 
Count Rumford seat, and a few clever elms at the Concord Land- 
ing. The Rumford House, though it has not the finest elms, is 
most tastily shaded of any habitation in the town, and has a noble 
old oak among the trees, in its small park. This house has con- 
siderable of a history. Returning up to Main street, you pass 
the tasteful mansion of Theodore French, and admire the match- 
less shag-bark walnut on the green slope behind it, and the fine 
grove of oaks on the hill-side that borders his beautiful field. 
This is far the pleasantest place in Concord — to our taste. We 
have passed it a hundred times, and never once, to our recollec- 
tion, without admiration of that peerless shag-bark, which towers 
up like a good-sized button-wood ; and in shape, dimensions, rich 
foliage and position exceeds almost any tree we ever beheld. 



TREES. 151 

We ought to thank the early settlers of Concord for planting, 
or sparing, so many trees. We honor, too, the taste of the present 
inhabitants, in this behalf. They seem not only to appreciate 
the old shades that have come down to them from other times, 
but are prompt to plant trees themselves. And the soil is as 
favorable to trees, as the people. They flourish in every part of 
the town. And all classes of the people, the most unlikely, one 
would imagine, to have such a taste, seem to fancy these beautiful 
ornaments. The very party editors set out trees. One whole 
street owes its branching and leafy honors, it is said, mainly to 
one of them — the pretty little Centre street. It ought to bear 
his name. And we would respectfully suggest to the tasteful 
editor, whether he had not better devote his remaining energies 
to the further adornment of the town in this way, rather than to 
the miserable business of editing for political party, of any kind. 
Would it not be more for his own enjoyment, and certainly for 
his reputation with posterity, to vest the remainder of his renown 
in thrifty young elms, maples, and button-woods, rather than in 
party politics? 

But we return down Main street to the patriarchs, the mon- 
archs of Concord trees, and the peers at least of any we have 
ever beheld this side of old England. And indeed they would 
show with reputation even there, and would scarcely dishonor 
one of the royal avenues of Windsor Park, or even that king of 
kingly walks, the " Long Walk" from Windsor Castle, three 
miles into Windsor Forest, lined on each side with a double row 
of British elms ! These royal Concord trees are about half 
way between " South Church" aforesaid and the pitch of the hill 
below it. They range along the west side of Main street — high 
up from the road, and cast their old shadows, toward sunset, fer 
off into the beautiful meadows and the winding river. They are 
the oldest trees doubtless in the place. We have never seen any 
in New Hampshire of such venerable appearance. They stand 
so thick as to interweave their long branches. A wide and eleva- 
ted side-walk runs along beneath them, affording a most pleasant 
saunter and promenade. You gaze upward into their dark tops, 
the giant branches running away up into the wilderness of foliage, 



152 TREES. 

and bending off in great curves down again over the distant road, 
intersecting each other in countless gothic arches, like the roofing 
and recesses in the old abbeys and priories of England ; branches 
big enough for trunks to great trees — and then the trunks them- 
selves — vast, shapeless, and rooted all abroad in the ground, to 
withstand the wrestlings of a century's winds among their mighty 
tops. You feel awed and overwhelmed as you look up, as when 
in Westminster Abbey or the old York Minster. Here you are 
gazing on the originals, there on the architectural copies — the 
coping and the lancet arch of the old cathedral being borrowed 
doubtless from the tree top. God built the old elm, and your 
Christopher Wrens and Inigo Joneses the " solemn temples" of 
Britain. Yet they get the homage and admiration of men, rather 
than the Architect of the universe. 

Some of these great trees are scarred, where the lightning has 
struck them, and followed them from the high summit into the 
ground. The grand original row seems to have been interrupted. 
One great tree stands alone at considerable distance below it, and 
another above, both on a line with it, and evidently of the same 
generation. They are a magnificent spectacle ; and there are 
some highly tasteful dwellings beneath their shadow. We wish 
the row had been continued the entire length of the high part of 
the street. Nothing in the world would be more magnificent. 
And how cheaply and easily it might have been done ! The plant- 
ing of a sapling is a trifle in expense. There it grows, and costs 
nothing but time. 

We have omitted mention of sundry noble elms above the 
North Meeting-House. Perhaps, as single trees, some of these 
are unrivaled. The old veteran standing in front of the Coffin 
house, is an unrivaled tree. 

But we have said a great deal, and must release our reader and 
pen, with a call on every man to plant a tree. It is a virtue to 
set out trees. It is loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. 
Set out trees — not to make your home outshine your neighbor's ; 
but for him to look at and walk under, — and to beautify God's 
earth, which he clothed with trees, and you cut them all down. 
Every tree is a " feather in the earth's cap" — a plume in her 



SALEM. 153 

bonnet, a tress upon her forehead. It is a comfort, an ornament, 
a refreshing to the people. And when peace and liberty prevail, 
we will have an Eden of them, from one end of the land (and the 
world) to the other. 



POETRY. 
[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 9, 1841.] 

I HAVE ransacked our scanty exchanges for a morsel for this 
" corner," but can find none that will speak. Poetry that won't 
speak and ring, is worse than none. The poetry is the match, 
the torch to our little field-piece — and if it is not fiery, if there is 
no ignition in it, no explosion, we might as well put an icicle to 
our priming. Miserable prose, any prose, is better than any thing 

short of first-rate verses. I will substitute a skein or two of 

narrative, — any thing — My jaunt home from Lynn, last but one. 
I meant to have sketched an incident or two of it, for the Herald, 
in the time of it, and began to, but events crowded it by. Parker 
Pillsbury was with me ; we came by way of Newburyport and 
Salem. Passed the noted house where Richard Crowninshield 
murdered old Mr. White, and hung himself after it, to prevent 
Salem people hanging him. They did hang two young Knapps 
for the same murder. I saw the stately house — the windows of 
the bed chamber, where the ill-fated old man lay, secure in his 
slumbers, sleeping the sleep from which he was not to wake. 
His young brother crept infernally in, and murdered him, to get 
his money, to spend like a fool. Pity the rich old man would 
not have freely given the profligate youngsters any amount of the 
stuff, for the asking, and pity the miserable young men had not 
known of such a disposition, had the old man entertained it. 
They would not have murdered him then, and Salem peopte would 
not have hung them — a triple murder. Daniel Webster displayed 
all his eloquence to compass the conviction and slaughter of 
those wretched young men. Had he not succeeded, and they 
had escaped, it would not have been strange, if they had murdered 



154 NEWBURYPORT. 



him, in revenge for his attempt upon their young lives — some 
night. I never could admire Webster's oratory on that bloody 
occasion. He was not State's attorney. He was not officially 
bound to appear against them. He was a volunteer, and a mer- 
cenary at best, eloquent for a fee, earning bread at the price of 
those young wretches' lives. Or was he merely adding to his 
fame ! Fame to him, but death, horrid death to them. Death, 
to which White's murder was but a pin's prick, in suffering, as 
it was but a speck in crime. They murdered the Knapps in 
cold blood, without even the base motive of money. They mur- 
dered them for coward fear, at best. They were afraid they, or 
somebody else, would murder community, would stab the state, 
some dark night, and so they hung up the two youths, like dogs. 
The bare fact of their hanging would multiply the chances of 
murder in the commonwealth to an incalculable extent. To have 
forgiven them, publicly, from sacred regard to human life, would 
have gone infinitely far towards abolishing the fashion of murder. 

I saw " Gallows Hill" on the borders of the haughty town of 
Salem, where the ancestry of those who hung the Knapps for 
murder, murdered scores of unhappy women, a century and a 
half ago. They took them up on to that gloomy hill, and stran- 
gled them in the air, for being witches. I don't know what a 
witch is, or what it was then. But they charged those poor, 
helpless women with witchcraft, and murdered them. Not a 
soul of the murderers was hung for it. It was the property and 
standing that did it, led on by the learned and solemn clergy. 
If nmrderers ever deserved hanging, the wretches did, who stran- 
gled those poor women on " Gallows Hill." The Hill towers up 
above Salem, like Bunker Hill above Charlestown. They had 
better erect a two-hundred-fcot monument on " Gallows Hill," 
in commemoration of the glorious victory gained there by the 
religion of the old commonwealth over the witches. 

We rode to Newburyport, over one of the fairest roads in 
New England, quite deserted now, for the flying rail-way, beside 
which, the once rapid turnpike looks like absolute stationary, 
and standing stock still. Welcomed at the hospitable mansion 
of William Ashby. Spent the afternoon in visiting sundry 7neet' 



NEWBURYPORT. 155 



ing-houses, open to us as visiting strangers, but not as anti-slavery 
advocates. The godly pagodas were all shut as close as a clam- 
shell, or a miser's money-box, against the plea of perishing human- 
ity. They wan't built for that. They were built for loorship. We 
went to the top of the belfry of one of the reverend houses. The 
Reverend Doctor Dana preaches in it, one of the successors to 
the Galilee fishermen. The view from his turret is quite fine. 
Beneath your feet the pretty town — prettiest on account of the gar- 
dens left in it. Had not the embargo smitten down its commerce, 
however, some thirty years ago, in compliment to slavery, the 
gardens would long ago have been devoured by great brick build- 
ings. Up into the country stretches the glittering Merrimack — 
the rail-road cars smoking (at times) across its daring bridge. 
A white sail bedecking here and there the beautiful inland sea. 
Down, out at its mouth, the dark, inky main, blending with the 
" blue above." Plum Island, its sand ridges scolloping along the 
horizon like the sea serpent, and the distant outline broken by 
many a tall ship, leaning, still, against the sky. We peeped in, 
after our descent fi-om the belfi-y, at the empty, deserted scene of 
worship, and the tomb-like pulpit. All was hollow, as the heart- 
less formalities performed there by ghostly superstition, and by 
orthodox gentility, every seventh day. The boxes of the theatre 
were empty then. Myriads of fans and psalm books occupied 
the cushioned places of the worshippers. The worshippers were 
off at their several games of life — every one overreaching his 
neighbor. For that is the week day fruits of the religion of all 
these meeting-houses. 

We went, next, to the Reverend Mr. Stearns' — " House of 
God." This contained several oljects of interest. A marble 
slab imbedded in front of the pulpit, announcing that the famous 
George Whitefield was buried beneath it. A marble cenotaph 
monument stood in one corner of the house, to his memory, of 
great beauty, (if such a thing can be beautiful,) piously erected 
by the late Wm. Bartlett, at an expense of some fourteen hundred 
dollars, enough to have built some poor laborer, out of whom he 
had extracted a portion of the funds, a comfortable home, who 
had to go without a home, that the memory of a pro-slavery di- 



156 WHITEFIELD. 



vme might be honored with a temple. One ample side of the 
monument was inscribed with eulogium of Whitefield, emblaz- 
oning his piety, telling how many times he traversed the Atlan- 
tic, and how many thousand sermons he preached. And did all 
his voyages, and sermons, I asked myself, ever lead a single hu- 
man soul to real repentance of sin, and reformation of character 
and life ? I was constrained to answer, probably not. He might 
have excited thousands to be religious, but probably few or none 
to be substantially righteous in heart and life. 

The bones of Whitefield repose in a vault beneath the pulpit. 
I understand he wished to be interred there. If he did, it was a 
weak ambition. His chance for Paradise would not, I think, be 
enhanced by it, though it would win him the worship of many a 
devotee, who, in after-days, would seek entrance there, through 
faithful attendance in that temple of idolatry. I was prevailed on 
to descend into the vault, and behold the sainted orator's re- 
mains. I did not want to, but thought, as I was so nigh, it might 
be hardly tasteful to omit doing what others had gone pilgrimage 
to accomplish. The sexton lighted a lamp — raised a trap-door 
behind the pulpit, and we went down. A small door swinging 
open into a brick vault, about as capacious as a common ash- 
house, — disclosed the narrow resting-place of the Reverend 
dead. Two other divines, I believe, repose there with the cele- 
brated Methodist. I forget their names — Whitefield's coffin lay 
across theirs. The lid of it was raised, and there lay the skull, 
and the bones of some of the limbs, in a bed of apparent mould, 
I touched the forehead bone. It was cold enough. I would not 
indulge in any of the weak and unwarrantable associations com- 
mon to such sights. Bones and ashes lay before me. They 
once belonged to fellow-men. They were therefore objects of 
more interest than if they had belonged to cattle. The men 
were neither of them philanthropists, as I learned, or benefactors 
of their race — in their life time. Their clay had been deposited 
there, in that house where God's poor had no quarters, (or quar- 
ter.) Vanity had sought that place for its bones, and vain super- 
stition and idolatry had put them there. They were but bones 
now, — and the place was unfit for the stay of any bones that had 



ANTI-SLAVERY JAUNT TO THE iMOUNTALN?. 157 

consciousness annexed to them, and so I turned away from gazing, 
and sought the wholesome air above as speedily as possible, and 
the abodes of the living, the humblest of whom interests me far 
more than dead clergy. Some of Whitefield's bones were miss- 
ing. Some eminently pious visiter had purloined them, and 
conveyed them away, — as amulets, perhaps, or tokens to show at 
the gates of Elysium. I was told Whitefield died in the next 
house but one, in rear of the meeting-house. The very next 
house to the meeting-house was distinguished, however, for an 
event far more interesting to humanity, than all that pertains to 
priests and their temples. It was the birth-place of Garrison. 
I would gladly have sought admission to it, to see where the 
Liberator passed his days of infancy and childhood — but it was 
getting late, and we retired. 

We passed the evening pleasantly and hospitably, at the house 
of our anti-slavery friend Charles Butler, with the Newburyport 
handful of friends of the cause, and the next morning set our 
faces for the Granite North. 



ANTI-SLAVERY JAUNT TO THE MOUNTAIN? 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 10. 1841.] 

We meant, from the several stages of our hurried expedition, 
to drop back for the Herald some of its incidents, detailed while 
events and impressions were fresh. But we could not find op- 
portunity. The rapidity of our movement and constant occupa- 
tion during intervals of anti-slavery action, compelled us to defer 
attempting it, and we must now give our readers a dull remini- 
scence. 

In company with brother Garrison, we left Concord the morn- 
ing of 23d of August. The morning was clear and pleasant 
after the rains of Saturday night and Sunday. The air was 
purified and refreshed from the parching drought, and the earth 
joyous as the " shining morning face" of a new-washed school 
boy. The dust was laid, and travelling beautiful. We crossed 
14 



158 ANTI-SLAVERY JAUlNT TO THE MOUNTAINS. 

the Merrimack, hailing it as our native stream, brother G. at its 
mouth, and we up its coldest tributary, and rode over Canterbury 
high hills with that lightness of heart and freedom of spirit, 
which God vouchsafes, in our land and day, only to the faithful 
abolitionists. Others may " labor" " and seek rest" as they may. 
They don't find it. Kearsarge mountain, looming in the western 
distance, at solemn height, gave us promise of the mightier peaks 
in the great chain to which we were journeying, standing alone, 
in advance of its high peers, like an advance guard, encouraging 
us by its great, but subordinate elevation, to expect altitudes 
equal to our loftiest wishes. Speeding on by many a bold home 
on the hills, and many a valley whose retired beauty recalled to 
delighted recollection the vales of Scotland, we approached the 
tributary stream paid to the Merrimack, from out New Hamp- 
shire's chiefest lake, and which bears its name, the Winnipisockee. 
This, with our own little native river, the cold and swift Pemige- 
wasset, from the Franconia Notch, conspiring a short distance to 
the left of our way, in the formation of the Merrimack. Just 
before crossing Winnipisockee river, we passed the brick " stee- 
ple house," where the honorable Samuel Tilton, at the instigation 
of the honorable Daniel Atkinson, and supported by an honor- 
able mob — " all honorable men" — arrested George Storrs for the 
felony of an anti-slavery prayer. What a sign that event of re- 
publican and christian times ! And they tried him, for his anti- 
cipated anti-slavery lecture, before a New Hampshire justice of 
the peace ! a fact that will be picked up by the future Belknap 
for our history, and which will afford a sort of immortality to 
some on the banks of the Winnipisockee, who otherwise might 
have enjoyed a comfortable oblivion. 

On the high lands of Sanbornton (taking the old road for 
prospect) the glorious mountains of the North showed us their 
blue outline, the broad, whale-like back of Moosehillock, and the 
pyramid-looking Haystacks, blending with the sky, and bedimmed 
with vapor and cloud. They called to mind the first discovered 
land, last summer, on our voyage to England — the dim Irish 
shores, and the misty mountains of Wales. Towards sunset our 
own home-hills greeted our si^ht, and the once loved spires of 



ANTI-SLAVERY JAUNT TO THE MOUNTAINS. 159 

the village where we were born, their clean white showing pic- 
turesquely among the green of the woods beyond them. Old 
North Hill, with its bare forehead and commanding peak, which 
in Scotland would have been crowned with immortality in a hun- 
dred songs, standing there unhonored and unsung, a bleak hill 
top, climbed now and then for prospect, but chiefly for the blue- 
berries that grow upon its brow, or the sheep and young cattle 
and wild colts that pasture up its sides. Few places, of so little 
note, strike the eye of the traveller so pleasantly as the town of 
Plymouth in Grafton county. A beautiful expanse of intervale 
opens on the eye like a lake among the hills and woods, and the 
pretty river Pemigewasset, refreshed with its recent tributary, 
Baker's river, from the foot of Moosehillock, and bordered along 
its crooked sides with rows of maple, meanders widely from 
upland to upland through the meadows, and realizes to the mind 
some of the sequestered spots in the valleys of the Swiss cantons. 
It was with no small interest that we introduced the editor of the 
liiberator to the scene of our birth and boyhood. It was the 
birth-place of New Hampshire anti-slavery, too. We are sad to 
say, it is not now anti-slavery's dwelling place. The spirit that 
once animated it, has faded under the influence of the pro- 
slavery pulpit. 

We had been led to expect somewhat that the Congregational 
meeting-house, a very tasty synagogue, which we helped largely 
to erect a few years before our removal from the village, would 
be opened to brother Garrison for a lecture. We did not expect 
it from the character of its pulpit, but from the majority of the 
committee in charge of it, professed abolitionists, as well as from 
the prudence of the minority, though not interested in the anti- 
slavery cause. We supposed all had the necessary curiosity, if 
not the good taste, to want to hear the man of whom so many 
bugbear stories had been told in the village, and whose name 
had, they knew, become renowned on both sides the Atlantic. 
But a petty bigotry and priest-ridden prejudice prevailed. Per- 
haps the church malignity towards his fellow-traveller moved 
them to shut the meeting-house. No matter for the reason. They 
refused the house, unless upon a condition which abolitionists 



160 ANTI-SLAVERY JAUNT TO THE MOUNTAINS. 

could not accept, and which honorable men would never have 
offered. 

The Methodist meeting-house was also refused, but more hon- 
estly than the other, with a broad, ill-mannered No, from the 
temporary divine who tends it. Let them be forever shut against 
the cause of bleeding humanity. They are abandoned to their 
uses. As is ever the case, in the overruling of Providence, the 
paltry refusal of the meeting-houses served greatly to advance 
our cause, and magnify the occasion. Driven from the syna- 
gogues, the abolitionists applied for a grove across the river, on 
the land of Mr. Joy, of Holderness. He readily allowed them 
the use of it ; — one spot was found in the neighborhood of Plym- 
outh steeples, not dedicated and given over to slavery, and to 
soulless, heartless, ungodly sect. One temple there was, not 
made with hands, of God's own building, roofed with the blue 
sky and pillared about with the trees of the wood, and floored 
and carpeted with the glorious, green earth, dedicated, not to 
imitations of Jewish ceremonials, or the rites of heathenism, but 
to that worship of the Father, which He requireth of them, who 
worship Him in spirit and in truth. Thither anti-slavery repaired 
to hold her assembly, and hear the advocate of the Savior's poor. 
Semicircular seats, backed against a line of magnificent trees, to 
accommodate, we should judge, from two to three hundred, though 
we did not think about numbers, were filled principally with wo- 
men, and the men who could not find seats stood on the green 
sward on either hand, and at length, when wearied with standing, 
seated themselves on the ground. Garrison mounted on a rude 
platform in front, lifted up his voice and spoke to them in prophet 
tones and surpassing eloquence, from half past three till I saw 
the rays of the setting sun playing through the trees on his head. 
Jt was at his back — but the auditory could see it, if they had felt 
at leisure to notice the decline of the sun or the lapse of time. 
They heeded it not, any more than he, but remained till he ended, 
apparently undisposed to move, though some came from six, eigh., 
and even twelve miles distance. A vastly better impression was 
made than would have been, had poor, pitiful sect opened its 
portals. More attended. It was a different and a far better 



ANTI-SLAVERY JAUNT TO THE MOUNTAINS. ]G1 



auditory than would have been gathered in the meeting-house, 
especially if the pastors had countenanced the meeting and led 
in their implicit flocks. The auditory was not the village aris- 
tocracy from under the eaves of Bank, Court House, Seminary, 
or the Steeple House, as George Fox used to call it. Such would 
have had as little heart to hear or to act as any of their corpora- 
tions which admittedly " have no soul." Pearls cast before them 
would have been cast contrary to the scripture injunction. They 
could not have listened with hearing ears or understanding hearts. 
Their ears and hearts are kept by their pastors. Driven from 
the sanctuaries, we had another and freer auditory. They were 
politicians, to be sure, many of them ; but a politician has more 
of a heart left in him than a sectarian. Politics is not such a 
soul-canker as sect. Sect eats the heart all up. It leaves noth- 
ing in a man. He can't say his soul is his own, or that he has 
one, belonging to any body. He is a poor, creeping, formal idol- 
ater, bowing down to an image he has helped to set up, and to 
the wooden perch on which he mounts his idol for exhibition and 
worship. No, the politicians have their humanity left, at least a 
portion of it. And if it appeals to them, they are not afraid to 
hear it. It is not irreligious in their estimation to have " flesh 
jn their hearts," and pity for bleeding humanity. The meeting 
in the grove called out many of them who would not have entered 
the house, and we confess they have reason to suspect the motives 
of even an anti-slavery lecturer, who is admitted by the pastor 
into a pulpit. We don't blame them for their jealousy of meeting- 
house lecturers. It is a sign, if they are let into pulpits, that 
they have not at heart the interests of humanity. The. rejection' 
from the house gave Garrison many auditors of this kind. And 
though he told them the stern truth about their politics, they 
knew it was told in honesty. They knew there was no specula- 
tion or hypocrisy or party in it. They felt it was true, or at least 
honest. They understood it, and can repeat it. And they are 
the men to spread it among the people, at least some of them. 
Now let the little papacy of Plymouth village prate of Garrison's 
infidelity. The people have seen him and heard him, infidelity 
and all. And they heard more of christian truth and gospel 
14* 



16-2 NORTH HILL. 



preaching, m that one, river-bank discourse, than those yoked 
and lettered meeting-houses can ever afford from the day of their 
dedication to the time when not one stone of them shall be left 
upon another. 

Garrison spoke the better for being driven to the open air. 
The injustice and meanness of it aroused his spirit, and the 
beauty of the scene animated his eloquence. We never heard 
him speak so powerfully ; and as he spoke the more earnestly, the 
people, from like cause, heard with deeper interest. He scarcely 
alluded to the miserable Jesuitry that excluded us from the syna- 
gogue. We are thankful it all happened so. To God be the 
praise. 

We must defer, for another week, further account of our jour- 
ney, our ascent of North Hill, our jaunt to the Franconia Notch, 
to the Littleton convention — by the way, gloriously attended and 
conducted — and to Mount Washington, and our passage of its 
tremendous gap, side by side with the infant Saco, not wider 
there than the narrow path, but soon expanding into a bridged 
and boated river in the beautiful champaign region below the 
mountains. 



NORTH HILL. 



[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 17, 1841.] 

We meant to have gone on with our begun account of the 
White Mountain journey this week, but the fatigue and excite- 
ment of the Dover meetings have jaded us out, and we have no 
more power left to tell the story of the White Hills, than of bodi- 
ly vigor to climb again their inaccessible peaks. We spare our 
readers another week from reading a tame attempt at it. We 
will go with them up North Hill, though. This is no contemptible 
nscent, and if it stood where some of those renowned Scottish 
Bens do, and had undergone the poetic handling of their Burnses 
and Scotts, pe( pie would cross the ocean to see the sights from 
its top. 



NORTH HILL. 1(53 



We went up it the morning of Garrison's lecture among the 
Holderness maples. It is one of the most charming rides in the 
world, for the two or three miles up the Pemigevvassett, before 
you begin to ascend. It was a glorious morning, just such as 
vou would choose to go to such a show. A little above our start- 
hig, the Baker's river pays its quiet and humble tribute to the 
brave Pemigewassett, and tradition tells a thrilling story of an 
Indian fight with a party of hunters under Capt. Baker, fought a 
long time ago, at the forks of the streams. The Indians were 
beaten off, the story goes, but not defeated, and the white men 
tied down the river toward the New England settlements. When 
they had retreated through the trackless woods as far as they had 
strength to run without fainting for hunger, they halted near the 
confluence of the streams that form the Merrimack. Upon that 
solitude now stands the populous and stirring village of Franklin. 
They knew the Indians were after them, and feared they would 
have them if they could not contrive to divert them from the pur- 
suit. They had among them one friendly Indian. His aborigi- 
nal sagacity found a way to deliver them from their perilous pre- 
dicament. He struck a line of fires along the margin of the 
little brook, that tumbles down from the high hills west of the 
village, and which in its descent now turns many a mill wheel, 
whose music was then unheard amid the woods. It crosses the 
road and empties into the Pemigev.'assett just above its junction 
with the river of the lake. The Indian knew the children of 
the forest would pause and study that hurried encampment. He 
thought of cheating them with tokens of a reinforcement ; he cut 
some two hundred twigs of willow from the margin of the little 
brook, and stuck them up along beside the range of fires he had 
kindled, as spits for roasting their morsel of meat. Whether 
they stopped to roast any, or to eat, is not remembered. They 
retreated a short distance and s?cr(ted themselves, when the 
Canadian prowlers appeared upon the banks of the brook. They 
saw the ashes, and the signs of the hasty meal, and the smoked 
and scorched willow twigs. They counted them, and learned to 
their dismay that the hunters had got reinforced from the settle- 
ments, and were probably hard by in ambush. They took the 



164 iNORTH HILL. 



back track, without delay, and Captain Baker's handful army 
joyously made the best of their way in right the opposite direc- 
tion. We do not vouch for the accuracy of this history, though 
we have told it many a time, and we forget with what embellish- 
ments, in the story-telling days of our boyhood. We used to 
tiiink as much of Captain Baker, we remember, as we now do 
of Bonaparte or the Duke of Marlborough, and do still, for the 
matter of that. Fertile expanses of green intervale now smile 
along the mouth of Baker's river, and fifteen miles up its banks 
among the Rumney mountains, all which distance it has not a 
fall or hardly a ripple — a track for the future rail-way from the 
Pemigewassett to the Connecticut. It would look exceedingly 
wild and spirited, as the locomotive streamed panting and smok- 
ing up that narrow vale ! 

Two miles above the meeting of the little rivers, you cross a 
picturesque bridge at " the Falls," a scene for the painters when 
the land shall become like the old world, the home of the fine 
arts. Art paints nothing among us now. All our pictures are 
originals, from the hand of Him who made the world. A car- 
riage road of a mile or two, at an angle with the horizon that 
would discourage the dwellers by the sea-side, but which is all a 
level to the free people of the hills, brought us to the end of 
ichecl navigation, and two of our company took to the saddle, — 
brother Garrison, having never been on Aorsc-back, except his 
ride on a Shetland pony from Loch Katrine to Loch Lomond 
last year in the Scottish Highlands, preferring to try his fortune 
on foot. Suffice it to say, that in some three quarters of an hour 
we reached the commanding peak of the hill. The earth sphered 
up all around us in every quarter of the horizon, like the crater 
of a vast volcano, and the great hollow within the circle was 
scarcely less smoky than that of Vesuvius or Etna during their 
recess of eruption. The little village of Plymouth lay right at 
our feet, the i:ngle of observation seeming far steeper from the 
top downward, than from the village to the top of the mountain. 
Off the declivity, on the western side, lay tidy farms and snug 
houses, along a good road where since our remembrance settle- 
ments had not penetrated, and which still bears the name of the 
" New Discovery." 



NORTH HILL. 165 



To the south stretches a broken, swelling upland country, but 
champaign from the top of North Hill, patched all over with grain 
fields and green wood lots, the roofs of the farm-houses shinino- 
in the sun. South-west, the Cardigan mountain showed its bald 
forehead among the smokes of a thousand fires, kindled in the 
woods in the long drought. Westward, Moosehillock heaved up 
its long back, black as a whale ; and turning the eye on northward, 
glancing down the while on the Baker's river valley, dotted over 
with human dwellings like shingle bunches for size, you behold 
the great Franconia Range, its " Nctch" and its Haystacks, the 
Elephant mountain on the left, and Lafayette (Great Haystack) 
on the right, shooting its peak in solemn loneliness high up into 
the desert sky, and o'ertopping all the neighboring Alps but 
Mount Washington itself The prospect of these is most im- 
pressive and satisfactory. We don't believe the earth presents a 
finer mountain display. The Haystacks stand there like the 
Pyramids on the wall of mountains. One of them eminently has 
this Egyptian shape. It is as accurate a pyramid to the eye as 
any in the old valley of the Nile, and a good deal bigger than 
any of those hoary monuments of human presumption, of the im- 
pious tyranny of monarchs and priests, aiid of the appalling ser- 
vility of the erecting multitude. Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh does 
not more finely resemble a sleeping lion than the huge mountain 
on the left of the Notch does an elephant, with his great, over- 
grown rump turned uncivilly toward the gap where the people 
have to pass ! Following round the Panorama, you come to the 
Ossipees and the Sandwich mountains, peaks innumerable and 
nameless, and of every variety of fantastic shape. Down their 
vast sides are displayed the melancholy Icokiug slides, contrasting 
with the fathomless woods. 

But the lakes — you see lakes, as well as woods and mountains, 
from the top of North Hill. Newfound lake in Hebron, only 
eight miles distant, you canH see, which we can't account for, but 
that it lies too deep among the hills. Ponds show their small 
blue mirrors from various quarters of the great picture. Worth- 
en's Mill Pond and the Hardback, where we used to fish for trout 
in truant, bare-footed days, Blair's Mill Pond, White Oak Pond, 



166 NORTH HILL. 



and Long Pond, and the Little Sqiiam, a beautiful, dark sheet of 
deep, blue water, about two miles long, stretched amid the green 
hills and woods, with a charming little beach at its eastern end, 
and without an ishnd. And then the Great Squam, connected 
with it on the east by a short, narrow stream, the very queen of 
ponds, with its fleet of islands, surpassing in beauty all the foreign 
waters we have seen, in Scotland or elsewhere — the islands, cov- 
ered with evergreens, wliich impart their hue to the mass of the 
lake, as it stretches seven miles on east from its smaller sister, 
towards the peerless Winnipisockee. Great Squam is as beau- 
tifal as water and island can be. But Winnipisockee — it is the 
very " Smile of the Great Spirit." And the Indians gave it the 
name to signify that smile. And, verily, if the propitious glance 
of creative Power could be left upcn its inanimate works, we 
should think it would play there in the form of this glorious lake. 
Its finest view, however, is not from North Hill. Red Hill is the 
place to behold it, and there the Indians must have stood when 
they gave it its name. Red Hill is near its northern extremity, 
and we never saw such an object in nature as Winnipisockee 
seen from its top. It looks as if it had a thousand islands. They 
rel! of three hundred and sixty-five, one for every day in the year. 
But there must be many mere, some of them large enough for 
little towns, and others not bigger than a swan or a wild duck 
swimming on its surface of glass. Days might be spent to grati- 
fication and profit on the top of North Hill ; but we had not the 
time. Garrison was to speak to the people on American slavery 
in the afternoon, and we had to curtail our stay. It was with 
emotions that we can't describe, that we cast our farewell gaze 
over all that well-remembered, intimately known, native region, 
that lay beneath our feet. It was the scene of most of our mortal 
existence. Our young footsteps had wandered over most of its 
localities. Time had cast it all far back. That Pemigewassett, 
with its meadows and its border trees ! That little village, whiten- 
ing on the margin of its intervale, and that one house we could 
distinguish among them, where the mother that watched over and 
•^ndured our wayward childhood, totters at fourscore ! We had 
to turn away and seek refuge from it ajl in God and anti-slaveby, 



FRANCONIA NOTCH. 167 

and descended the hill with what cheer we might. O that we 
could have found an anti-slavery people in the valley below ! 
But they were absorbed in the miserable business of scraping up 
more than is needful or innocent, of the perishing trash of this 
world, and in the paltry village habitudes that belong to mer- 
cenary life. The interest once felt for humanity, there in the 
breasts of a choice corps of abolitionists, had faded out under the 
influence of selfishness, politics and sect. The little minister 
had got the better of their philanthropy, and they were quietly in 
his harness at the call of the steeple bell. 



FRANCONIA NOTCH AND THE MEETING AT LITTLETON. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Oct. 1, 1841.] 

We bargained last year with our beloved fellow-traveller Gar- 
rison, in the Scottish Highlands, either on Loch Katrine, on 
board the barge rowed by McFarlan and his three Highlanders, 
or else as we rode the Shetland ponies from Katrine to Loch 
Lomond, through " Rob Roy's country," and along his "native 
heath," and when we were gazing upward at the mist-cJad moun- 
tains, that if ever we lived to get home again to our dear New- 
England, we would go and show him New Hampshire's sterner 
and loftier summits, her Haystacks and her White Hills, and 
their Alpine passes. God in His tender mercy preserved us 
homeward o'er the terrible sea, and has kept us since amid the 
vicissitudes of the rolling year. We have performed our promise, 
and been our stipulated journey. We had gazed together on the 
Scottish trosachs and Caledonia's mountains, and now have be- 
held New Hampshire's highlands and her eternal notches and 
gaps, her lonely mountain peaks and boundless woods. Scot- 
land's " Crags" are " wild and majestic" — but they are no match 
for ours. They are but island mountains. Ours are continental. 
The Ben Lomonds and Ben Nevises of old Scotland rise abruptly 
from the lowland plains, in distinct and naked elevation. Our 
great Haystacks and our Mount Washingtons lay away from the 



168 FRANCONIA NOTCH. 

sea and the level country, enshrouded by illimitable woods, amid 
piled-up hills, and you have to climb as high almost as the Scottish 
summits, before you get to their feet, and you view them at last, 
not in the full vigor of untired imagination, as you come to the 
" Highlands," and with your fancy all afire with poetry and song, 
but you reach them with imagination jaded and wearied out with 
hills on hills in everlasting succession, more than you can remem- 
ber or cope, and thty stand there all unsung to speak for them' 
selves, and you have to take them as they are. But we cannot 
compare them, any mire than we can the great men of the old 
world and the new. We cannot bring them together, that they 
may show themselves at once before us. 

We started from the home of our dear Plymouth kindred, 
Wednesday morning, the 25th of August, and took our way up the 
wild Pemigewassett. The road follows that stream some thirty 
miles to its source in the very notch of the great Franconia 
mountains, and is perhaps the levelest, as it undoubtedly is the 
pleasantest of any road of that length, any where in New Hamp- 
shire, if not in New England. The mountains shut down upon 
the river so that the settlers had to stick to the stream. They 
could not leave it far without coming upon a surface a little too 
perpendicular for even the travelling and inhabiting ambition of 
the northern regions of the Granite State. The road courses 
along the diminishing river, and up the narrowing intervales, and 
between the converging and threatening uplands, that soon de- 
generate into mountains, which though nameless, in a land whose 
staple commodity is hills, would still rank respectably among 
the chief summits of more southern New England. Beautiful 
strips of intervale continue all the way up through Campton, 
Thornton and Woodstock, the picturesque and appropriate name 
of what was once Peeling, and at the head of plough navigation. 
Woodstock is the last of the towns, though Lincoln has ventured 
up above her, into the very notch, and has some families besides 
her town officers. Lincoln may be made, however, a comfortable 
town by temperance and hardy industry. Temperate industry 
can prosper any where, in sj; t - (,f mountains and winter ; but we 
would have advised men to stop in their career of emigration 



FRANCONIA NOTCH. IG9 

toward the Franconia range, as far shtrt of it at least as Wood- 
stock, until the population, so far up, was a little thicker. Wood- 
stock has a noble population of abolitionists. It was once the 
haunt of rank party politics ; but the temperance reform overrun 
it some years ago, and then a revival of religion, which seems 
naturally enough to follow tee-totalism on principle, and being 
aloof from the more influential sects, the free inhabitants em- 
braced quite generally the doctrines of abolitionism when they 
were first presented. New Organization, we believe, has not 
been able to seduce them from their fidelity. If all New Hamp- 
shire was as humane and free as Woodstock, she would be the 
queen State of the Union. 

The scenery through Thornton strongly resembles the rural 
districts of Scotland. It is so like it, that many years ago a con- 
siderable number of Scottish emigrants, on their way perhaps to 
Barnet and Ryegate, settlements of their countrymen in Ver- 
mont, were induced to stop short and settle here. The McLel- 
lans, the Robertsons, the McDearmids and the McNortons. We 
remember their musical accent and foreign look, in our boyish 
days. They have passed away now, and liieir places are supplied 
by their half-yankee descendants. 

At Tilton's tavern, about twelve miles above Plymouth, we 
halted for Parnell Beach and Ezekiel Rogers, who were to meet 
us here from East Campton, and accompany us to the Littleton 
convention. Nothing seemed wanting to make Tilton's inn a 
beautiful and very refreshing place for the traveller, but that a 
horrible, satanical beverage was sold in it, that they call rum. 
People buy it to drink ! It is " an enemy." They " take it into 
their mouths to steal away their brains." " Every cup of it is 
unblest, and its ingredient is a devil." We saw two men buy 
some of it, and swallow it down deliberately. We remonstrated 
with them for their suicidal desperation, and with the taverner 
for furnishing it to them. His excuse was, that folks would have 
it, and he felt obliged to keep it or lose the patronage of the 
travelling community. 

Friends Beach and Rogers arrived, and we all resumed our 
journey to the mountains. About a dozen miles of excellent 
15 



170 FRANCONIA NOTCH. 

road carried us to Garnsey's tavern, in the immediate neighbor 
hood of the great peaks. We stopped there to refresh ourselves 
and horses, and to go out to visit tlie celebrated Flume. We 
refreshed ourselves, for we had brought some wholesome bread 
along with us, and got some spring water. Whether our horses 
got any refreshment, we doubted — for poor Garnsey was so stu- 
pidly besotted when we returned from the Flume, that he could 
not convince us whether he had fed them or not. He run of a 
notion he had. He thought he had watered them too ; but the 
horses denied that as soon as we led them to the trough. We 
went out east, to see the Flume, about a mile into the wood. 
The way was exceedingly romantic. It was a foot-path through 
the very deepest and heaviest growth of New Hampshire woods. 
We passed birches as big as mast pines. About a quarter of a 
mile from the high road, the path pitched down two or three hun- 
dred feet, very precipitously, at the bottom of which roared a 
mountain stream among the rocks, as clear as crystal, and as 
cold as a well. Our way lay across it on the trunk of a fallen 
spruce, that required some steadiness to pass. We crossed this 
stream three or four times more, and came to the cascade. The 
bed of the stream is here a bare, smooth rock, ascending some 
ten or fifteen degrees. It is about twice as wide as the stream, 
which glides down over it, barely covering the mossy rock. It 
continues up, we should think, several hundred feet. At the foot 
of it the water dashes into a basin. We walked up dry shod the 
whole length of the cascade to where the rocks began to wall up 
on each side and form the entrance way to the Flume. This is 
a tremendous chasm, cut directly up into the bosom of the moun- 
tain — the walls rising on each side, in the highest parts sixty or a 
hundred feet, as if they had been chiselled in the solid rock. 
We took no dimensions, but should say the great sluice-way was 
fifteen or twenty feet wide, and as many rods long. It may be 
longer. The stream was along the bottom of it, among enormous 
rocks that have got there, we could not conjecture how. The 
Flume bends about at the upper end, and we could not see its 
termination. There seemed no place, from which the rocks 
could have been rent, in the stupendous walls of the chasm, 



FRAxNCONIA NOTCH. 171 

which rose up smooth to the top, and we thought they must have 
been tumbled along down the great trough by the headlong water 
in time of flood. We were struck with awe at entering it, as we 
gazed up the giant trench, to spy a massy rock, weighing, we 
should think, a hundred ton, hanging in the very jaws of the 
chasm, suspended in the air. It looks, at first sight, as if it was 
about to fall. It must have dropped into the rift, we imagined, 
when it was rent asunder by the volcano or earthquake or other 
mountain throe that opened it, or mayhap some Titan wantonly 
hurled it down there from the peak of Great Haystack. A 
wild and picturesque-looking bridge stretches over the chasm a 
little way from the pendant rock. It is made by the trunk of a 
mighty tree fallen across there by some hurricane that swept the 
mountain side. Brother Beach had entered the Flume ahead of 
the rest of us, and when we had advanced a little way into it, we 
discovered him, beyond the accessible path, clambering by the 
hands along the side of the great wall. He had doffed his hat, 
coat and waistcoat, and boots and stockings, and was adventuring 
for the upper end of the cavern. We feared he would " catch his 
death of cold" — if he did not get dashed to pieces — for it was as 
cold and damp as a dungeon. We shouted to him at the .top of 
our voices ; but he could not hear us, for the roar of the cataract, 
and the distance. He soon disappeared at the bend of the Flume, 
and we saw no more of him, till a cry overhead made us look 
up, and we beheld him midway of the bridge. If Walter Scott 
could have had such an incident, he would have made a picture 
out of it, to immortalize some of his Rob Roys or Helen Mc 
Gregors. We told brother Beach, after his descent, that we 
would now risk him for an old-organized anti-slavery agent, and 
advised him to take the field. We all sung Old Hundred at the 
foot of the cascade, and made our way back to Garnsey's. After 
giving the poor benumbed, besotted taverner what exhortation he 
had sense enough to hear, we paid him for his problematical oats, 
and rode on for the Notch. 

The way was most beautiful, through the still, solitary, primeval 
woods. We hoped a deer would show himself from the wild — 
but he would not — not knowing that we were no hunters. The 



172 FRANCONIA NOTCH. 

Pemigewassett brawled along our road side, no longer a river, 
but a mountain brook— foaming among the rounded rocks and 
cold enough to drink. The air was moist. " The summer sol- 
stice" had scarce " tempered" it. The road was exceedingly 
fine, and remarkably level, and the trees of the most majestic 
size. We came to a causeway or kind of bridge over the chan- 
nel of a little stream, now dried up — that ordinally paid its hurry- 
ing tribute to the river, and halted to see " the Basin." We can 
hardly give a description of it. It is carved by the chisel of the 
whirling stream out of the solid rock — some twenty feet across, 
the curve on one side rising about that height, leaning over the 
pool, and the dark evergreens on its brink looking down into its 
deep, pellucid, agitated bed. The water is mackerel color, but 
so clear, that the sandy bottom, though fifteen or twenty feet 
down, looks to be within two or three feet of the surface. It is 
said that two scientific pedestrians halted here to view it one hot 
day, and feeling desirous of bathing their feet, bantered one 
another to jump in : one of them tried it, and it was some time 
before he reappeared to his amazed companion — who, of course, 
refrained his feet from imitating him. You roll along a mile or 
two, the foad gently undulating through the majestic woods, and 
fringed with bushes of delightful green — when a vast and over- 
whelming opening breaks upon you, a boundless Roovi among 
the mountains, walled on the left by the great Elephant mountain, 
the rock covered by stunted evergreens precipicing up two thou- 
sand feet — the blue sky itself scarce visible over its eternal ridge. 
Before you, at the farther extremity, opens the Notch, curtained 
by the sky of Vermont, which there comes down upon it ; and on 
the right, the wooded, steep side of Lafayette, or Great Haystack. 
Nothing can exceed the awful sublimity of the great wall on the 
left. The vast mountain side is clothed with scales of rock, as 
with a coat of mail, scarred here and there with the old ava- 
lanches — while, opposite, the forest side of Lafayette is striped 
down with the deep green of modern woods, which have grown 
HI the paths of the " slides." At the northern extremity of the 
great Room you come to view " the Old Man of the Mountain." 
It is on your left, up, say fifteen hundred feet, a perfect profile of 



FRANCONIA NOTCH. 173 

an aged man, jutting out boldly from the sheer precipice, with a 
sort of turban on the head and brow; nose, mouth, lip . chin and 
fragment of neck, all perfect and to the life — and with a little 
fancy you supply the cheek and ear. It looks off south-east. It 
needs no imagination to complete it. It is perfect, as if done by 
art. But it is up where art has never climbed. 

The pond which heads the Pemigewassett lies a mirror at the 
foot of the almost perpendicular mountain. We followed a foot- 
path down to its margin, and wandered along its narrow beach to 
the northern extremity. The view south from here is truly won- 
derful. The sheer precipice of rock, rising to the sky on the 
right, and the forest side of Lafayette, as high and almost as steep, 
on the left, both coming down at the southern extremity of the 
great apartment in the form of a notch, and the whole floored 
by the green lake. While we stood pondering the magnificent 
scene, two or three wagons from the north drove rapidly through 
the pass. The rattle of their wheels sounded through the vast 
hollow like the running of a hundred chariots. 

The printer calls for copy. We have fallen into a particularity 
of detail which would take a volume before we got to Littleton, 
but we have not time to abridge. We must resume our sketch 
another week, and hope then to reach the White Mountains, and 
to conduct our readers to their summit, and let them off through 
their tremendous Gap, in a less tedious manner than we are 
wearying them with here. No writing is so difficult as this sort 
of narrative — the selection of facts among so many, and all so 
interesting, and the difficulty of conveying to the reader the im- 
pression made upon yourself, and of sketching scenes that have 
begun to fade from the memory. To travel well and see well, is 
rare enough ; to tell the story accurately and well, rarer still. It 
wants, among other things, the plain, colloquial, every-day style, 
which few writers are refined enough and courageous enough to 
adopt. 

15* 



J 74 LITTLETON CONVENTION 



LITTLETON CONVENTION AND THE WHITE 
MOUNTAINS. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Oct. 8, 1841.] 

Whoever would take a week's ride of more interest, gratifi 
cation and instruction, than any other in New England, will find 
it from Plymouth, in this State, to the White Mountains, by way 
of the Franconia Notch, — returning thence to Plymouth by 
Conway and the Winnipisockee lake. This circuit embraces a 
greater variety of beauty and grandeur in natural scenery than 
any the like distance in our knowledge. The White Mountain 
Notch, it is said, is best seen passed in the other direction, from 
Conway up. You then ascend it instead of descending, and get 
the sublime impressions of an enhancing approach to those awful 
piles in the great architecture of God. The other way you get 
the terrible and the appalling, as you precipitate from the level 
where flows the infant Saco, down through the jaws of the sun- 
dered mountain, and seem to be plunging almost to the bottomless 
abyss — with those frightful masses of fallen rock on every hand, 
bidding you gaze up to behold other hideous masses toppling to 
their descent. But the effect of the whole circle of impressions 
is best attained by witnessing Franconia first. This is sublime 
enough till you have seen the White mountains. It is indeed 
'trand and awful in itself — but most so before the imagination 
has been shattered and outraged by encountering those scenes of 
elemental strife and havoc, where thunder and earthquake have 
played their terrible antics about the great rival mountains. To 
be sure, in the course we prescribe, you visit Winnipisockee and 
Red Ilill after both these giant views. But you go for mere 
beauty there. And the degree of this is such, that no previous 
grandeur — or previous beauty even — can diminish the sense of it 
The picture from Red Hill defies competition, as it transcends 
description. It is the perfection of earthly prospect— only have 
a clear air and a fair day. The rest is there, and nothing can 
mar it or detract from it. Plymouth village, too, is a very plea- 
sant spot to the stranger to rest in, both before and after he has 



AND THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 175 

gone this grand round of excitement. Not that it would be plea- 
sant to the anti-slavery traveller (and he is the only one who can 
enjoy this scenery, or any other, with the emotions of a man ; 
others may appreciate ^ good road and a good tavern) to look at 
Its pretty meeting-house, all gagged and glued up against the free 
gospel of Him who came to preach deliverance to the captive, or 
to consider its smart population ridden to servility by a vain and 
superficial pro-slavery minister. That would be mortifying, but 
for the present must be borne with. Time will cure it, and a 
short time. 

Our readers left us last week standing on the margin of the 
pond at the foot of the " Old Man of the Mountain." We wish 
we could transport each one of them thither to enjoy the enchant- 
ment of that lonely and magnificent spot. But anti-slavery has 
not leisure to linger about enchanting places. We must away to 
our labors. We left the pond and the " guide board," that points 
the eye (not the foot) to the Old Genius of the Notch in his house 
up there above the eagle's haunt, and resumed our ride to La- 
fayette House, a tavern in the narrowest part of the pass. We 
did not go into it, and know nothing of its keeping ; but its loca-i 
tion is picturesque beyond all tavern stands we have ever seen. 
" The Stuarts' Inn," in the trosachs of Scotland, was romanti- 
cally located — but it could not match this. Behind the house 
rises a mountain wall a thousand feet on high, hung with woods 
of evergreen that anchor from top to bottom in the rifts of the 
rock. You may pretty accurately measure its elevation by the 
tiers of spruces that grow one above another all the way up, and 
of nearly equal height. The great cliffs at the summit seem to 
jut out over the inn. It were almost worth the journey there to 
drink a draught from tiie lead pipe water-spout that stands across 
the road, and pours out living water, equal to any that ever 
bubbled up from a white sand spring, enough to water a whole 
village. 

We resumed our ride. It led down a most beautiful scolloping 
road, gently descending through the majestic woods. We passed 
aiiother pond on our right — the head-water of the wild Ammo- 
noosuck. 



176 LITTLETON COiNVENTION 

It is scarce a bow-shot distance from the head pond of Pemige- 
wassett. There these waters start on their distant destinations ; 
one to seek the sea at Nevvburyport, by way of the freshdy 
Merrimack, and the other at Long Island Sound by the sluggish 
Connecticut, and its fat, Lethean, pro-slavery valley The Am- 
monoosuck pond is an enchanting sheet of water. It is embos- 
omed closely among these solitary woods. It is hard by the 
Lafayette House, and abounds with trout. The water fowl have 
probably not discovered it. What a place for the invalid from 
the pent-up city to come and sail on, in the hot summer months, 
in a beautiful highland barge ! Let them come and inhale health 
and invigoration with these mountain breezes — but don't let them 
bring their paltry fishing gear or their sporting 'coutrements. Let 
no man cast a knavish hook into these peopled waters, or dis- 
charge a felon gun at the gentle deer that stoops to drink on 
their wild margin. Humanity does not spoj-t with fowling pieces 
or fish-hooks. Let poverty on the sea-board — provided it can't 
get bread out of the generous eartii — sustain itself on the uncouth 
cod and halibut, that are fools enough to speculate on the temp- 
tations it may throw in tl.eir way. But the pretty mountain 
trout — let them live, and the bounding deer. There is enough to 
eat in New Hampshire without resorting to take their lives. 

A few miles descending ride brought us out of the woods and 
opened upon us a new world. From the very heart of the moun- 
tains you emerge on an expanded level, stretching away to the 
Connecticut, and terminating with the distant hills of Vermont. 
Some half dozen miles from Lafayette tavern, you settle down 
luto the village at the Franconia Iron Works — the famous region 
for cold, where the mercury sinks down as far below zero, as the 
bottom of the valley does below the peak of Great Haystack. 
Emerging from the woods, this giant mountain shows itself, as you 
look back, in all its Alpine majesty. You behold its naked sum- 
mit, with its quarter mile of bare cliff, reposing solemnly in "the 
upper sky" — the fugitive clouds ever and anon hurrying past its 
top, while down its mighty ravine from the extreme of vegetation 
to its base, descends the dreadful slidie, gathering inward from the 
slopes on either hand, like the great British side of the Niagara^ 



AND THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 177 

where the waters of the lakes concentrate to their final fall. The 
resemblance of this slide to the great cataract at the curve of 
the Horse-shoe is very palpable, and struck us instantly at behold- 
ing it. 

As we rode through the Notch after friends Beach and Rogers, 
we were alarmed at seeing smoke issue from their chaise top, and 
cried out to them that their chaise was a-fire ! We were more 
than suspicious, however, that it was something worse than that, 
and that the smoke came out of friend Rogers' mouth. And it 
so turned out. This was before we reached the Notch tavern. 
Alighting there to water our beasts, we gave him, all round, a 
faithful admonition. For anti-slavery does not fail to spend its 
intervals of public service in mutual and searching correction of 
the faults of its friends. We gave it soundly to friend Rogers, — 
that he, an abolitionist, on his way to an anti-slavery convention, 
should desecrate his anti-slavery mouth and that glorious Moun- 
tain Notch, with a stupifying tobacco weed. We had halted at 
the Iron Works tavern to refresh our horses, and, while they were 
eating, walked to view the Furnace. As we crossed the little 
bridge, friend Rogers took out another cigar, as if to light it when 
we should reach the fire. " Is it any malady you have got, broth- 
er Rogers," said we to him, " that you smoke that thing, or is it 
habit and indulgence merely ?" It is nothing but habit, said he, 
gravely, or I would say it was nothing else, and he significantly 
cast the little roll over the railing into the Ammonoosuck. " A 
revolution," exclaimed Garrison, " a glorious revolution without 
noise or smoke;" and he swung his hat cheerily about his head. 
It was a pretty incident, and we joyfully witnessed it, and as joy- 
fully record it. It was a vice abandoned, a self-indulgence denied, 
and from principle. It was quietly and beautifully done. We 
call on any smoking abolitionist to take notice and to take pattern. 
Anti-slavery wants her mouths for other uses than to be flues for 
besotting tobacco smoke. They may as well almost be rum-ducts 
as tobacco-funnels. And we rejoice that so few mouths or noses 
in our ranks are thus profaned. Abolitionists are generally as 
crazy in regard to rum and tobacco, as in regard to slavery. 
Some of them refrain from eating flesh and drinking tea and cof- 



178 LITTLETON CONVENTION 

tee. Some are so beivildcred that they won't fight in the way of 
christian retaliation, to the great disturbance of the churches 
they belong to, and the annoyance of their pastors. They do not 
embrace these " new-fangled notions" as abolitionists — but then 
one fanaticism leads to another, and they are getting to be mono- 
maniacs, as the Reverend brother Punchard called us, on every 
subject. 

The Furnace was not in blast. Its fires were out, and we 
walked on the white incrustations at the bottom of its lofty chim- 
ney, and looked up its ample tube which we had once seen filled 
to the top with glowing red coal and ore, burning for months with 
a heat that distilled the liquid iron like rain down into a fiery sea 
that weltered below. It was ci Id and void now. Had any of us 
y(«7/t enough to walk unharmed m it, should " Public Sentiment" 
arouse again in our midst, and heat it seven times beyond its 
wont ! Its enormous bellows, whose breathing when in action 
was like a hurricane in the Notch, was at rest, and we could lay 
our hand with impunity on its giant muzzle. We have seen the 
glowing ore blaze under its intluence, with the intense brilliancy 
of a star. There is sometliing depressing in a great suspended 
establishment like this. The absence of the busy men, and the 
cessation of the machinery and of the hum and bustle of their 
labor, Jill the place with vacuity and solitude. 

We rode on five miles to Littleton, and brother Garrison and 
ourself were welcomed most heartily and affectionately by Ed- 
mund Carleton and his interesting family. Other open hearts in 
the village welcomed our companions. Littleton is a very consid- 
erable village, a place of a good deal of enterprise, activity, intelli- 
gence and taste. It has a goodly number of sterling abolitionists. 
The commanding influences of the village are far enough from 
anti-slavery, but they are altogether above that petty pro-slavery 
that shuts up meeting-houses, or flings clubs or unmerchantable 
eggs at abolitionists. Whether it is pride, 'or good taste, or saga- 
cious opposition, we do not say. The place is not parson-ridden, 
like our poor town of Plymouth. We held our meeting in the 
meeting-house. Not the Reverend Mr. Worcester's — though he 
preaches in it. He does not own it. He does not say, " my 



AND THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 179 

pulpit," or " I dwell among mine own people," like the reverend 
master in Israel who insolently shut William Lloyd Garrison out 
of the Plymouth meeting-house the other day, and compelled the 
people who wanted to hear him, to go over the river into the 
woods. Reverend Mr. Worcester does not oicn the Littleton 
people or their public buildings. The Plymouth pastor does. He 
dwells among his oion people. To be sure, they neither love him 
nor respect him, if they speak the truth — but they are afraid, 
and they dread and hate anti-slavery, and they worship their tem- 
ple and their sect, and they are obliged to keep their superficial 
minister, and exhaust themselves to afford him a genteel mainte- 
nance. They have no respect for him, though they feel some 
vanity on the score of his genteel breeding. They selected him, 
we remember, with especial reference to his gentility. The am- 
bitious young folks had got so popular that they felt ashamed of 
poor, old, unfashionable Parson Ward, and sent off to Andover 
to get a genteeler minister. They got one, and turned the old 
gentleman away. We did what we could to prevent it. Parson 
Ward was an inveterate sectarian ; but then he had mind and 
humility, and there was some heart and gospel in his preaching. 
He would have been an abolitionist but for his sectarianism. He 
meant to be a minister of Christ ; and a minister of Christ would 
hardly, we should think, have consented to go into a place from 
which such an elder brother had been ejected, and for such a 
cause. But friend Punchard probably saw the spiritual wants 
of the people on the score of manners, and sacrificed his scruples 
at father Ward's treatment, out of love to the cause. He hired 
with them, at a genteel salary. They could not give father Ward 
$333'33. They readily raised $500 and over for his accom- 
plished successor. It was done by the fashionable influences 
that had moved in from more popular regions. The old Plym- 
outh folks had to stand round. The modern divine was settled, 
and he — " dwells among his own people." We are digressing — 
but it is all in the way of the cause. The Plymouth divine in- 
sults anti-slavery, when it comes to address the people on behalf 
of the bleeding slave, and the people can't have a chance to hear 
in their own meeting-house ! And it behoves us to proclaim it. 



180 LITTLETON CONVENTION 

The Reverend Mr. Worcester did not show his head at the 
convention. He was at home, and well enough to attend, for 
we saw him next morning at work about his door yard, in his 
shirt sleeves, as we passed his elegant dwelling. It would have 
been a compromise of his clerical dignity to meet with Garrison, 
and last of all would the son of " Cephas" be seen at a conven- 
tion with the editor of the Herald of Freedom ! We are ashamed 
for friend Worcester, for he has some mind, and ought to be 
above this clerical foppery. 

A goodly attendance of the people was at the convention. The 
flower of the village intelligence and education was there, but we 
had rather met the laboring poor — the humble men and the hum- 
ble women. Anti-slavery will make sudden work of it, when 
those classes dare venture to our meetings. They are now kept 
back by prejudice and influence. 

Jonathan P. Miller from Montpelier was present — Mr, Marsh 
from Danville — and Dr. John Dewey from Guildhall, Vermont, 
and all took active and interesting part in the meeting. We had 
a fragment of the proceedings put into our hand, but have mislaid 
it. Edmund Carleton was President, and a brother from the 
other side the Coimecticut, Secretary. Garrison, Beach, and 
Dewey, we believe, Business Committee. T. P. Beach prayed at 
opening of the meeting, — not by appointment of the President, — 
but of his own accord. W^e hope he prayed in fact, as well as 
form — a thing, we fear, not often done in public. The resolutions 
passed were, one declaring abolitionists had abundant reason to 
thank God and take courage in view of the past, and another that 
slavery was not a southern but a national institution, and one for 
which the North was eminently answerable — and that here was 
the place — this the very people, and now the time, when, among 
whom, and where, to agitate the anti-slavery question, and over- 
throw the slave system. 

Garrison let out his giant moral strength in full swing on both 
lliese resolutions. It was exalting and soul-refreshing to hear 
him. We were rejoiced that some of our Woodstock friends 
were there to hear him. If we mistook not, they got a glorious 
feast. Two of the respectable citizens of Littleton were manly 



AND THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 181 

enough and unacquainted enough with the anti-slavery question, 
to venture into the arena of discussion against Garrison. They 
were Major George Little and J. N. Bellows, Esq., an instructor 
in the village. They were of course quickly discomfited. It is 
no disparagement to them — nor do we mention it in any trifling 
feeling. They ought to be abolitionists, and we publicly tell them 
so. And if they appeared awkwardly in the hands of Garrison, 
it is only what the first pro-slavery talent in the country would 
do, were it honest enough and manly enough to venture the trial. 
The law champions and the divinity champions, and the doctors 
of all sorts would be mere fuel for the fire in the hands of the 
despised and abhorred Garrison, Able and interesting speeches 
were made by brothers Beach and Ezekiel Rogers. Brother 
Beach was calm, quiet and argumentative, — not so animated as 
we expected from a captive who had so recently " burst his cere- 
ments," and escaped his thraldom. Perhaps he remembered his 
clerical brethren yet in bondage, and their blind, stumbling, ditch- 
going followers. Ezekiel Rogers was original, humorous and 
forcible, as he is wont to be. He gave it to us in genuine 
cerdwainer style. He is a kind of John Hawkins in our enter- 
prise. Hawkins is a hatter. If he were a gentleman of liberal 
education, he would be shorn of chief his power. We are glad 
iriend Rogers is a shoe-maker. Pro-slavery has learned that he 
wields awl, knife and hammer. He takes a strong anti-slavery 
stitch, and his work don't rip. 

Garrison lectured to a full auditory in the evening, and we mis- 
take if he did not make a deep, convicting impression on many 
minds. Why then don't they espouse our cause? Why don't 
they come forward, as the hearers of the ancient apostles some- 
times did, with a " Men and brethren, what shall we do ?" Why, 
it would destroy their respectability, and they, therefore, " do not 
like our measures." 

Friday noon — the 27 August, having visited as many of rur 
dear anti-slavery friends as we could — we parted with our kind 
entertainers, and took our way to the great mountains. The day 
was lowering and threatened us a rainy time ; but we gave weather 
and all else cheerily into the Hands that alone can regulate them, 
1(J 



182 WHITE MOUNTAINS. 

and wended our way in high spirits. We passed the pleasant 
village of Bethlehem. It is a name connected with memorable 
events in the history of the human family. Nothing occurred lo 
attract our notice in this modern Bethlehem, but the tokens it 
afforded us of vicinity to the great elevations we were going to 
visit. We looked out for the summits. We had ourself once 
before been there, but the atmosphere was so surcharged with 
smoke and mist, that we could recognize but little that we re- 
membered. We descried several summits on our way that might 
have challenged the high distinction we were looking to bestow, 
but we withheld all allegiance, till within a mile or two of the first 
Mountain tavern, when we descried through the thick atmosphere 
a gloomy range of mountain — its summit, or summits, hid in 
thick clouds, and its awful breast gashed and lacerated with the 
mighty slides. We at once recognized it as the high object of 
our journey. Nothing could exceed its awful majesty and vast- 
ness. Every thing around us had for some time betokened that 
we were in the suburbs of one of the capitals of nature. The 
majestic woods, the tremendous elevation of the mountain ranges, 
and the vastness of the forest — the stillness in the air, and its 
altered temperature ; and the majestic roar of the Ammonoosuck 
along its bed of precipices spoke of its mountain descent, and 
that its fountains could not be far distant. It was a glorious hour. 
We rejoiced to introduce our beloved companion to these regal 
solitudes of our native State, and to find him full of appreciation, 
and ready to acknowledge the fulfilment of our pledge in the 
Scottish Highlands to show him an overmatch of Caledonia's 
mountains, on our own side of the Atlantic. It began to rain a 
little just as we entered the great level, and we hastened forward, 
and in good time to avoid the wet, reached Fabyan's " White 
Mountain House," formerly kept by the mountaineer Ethan Allen 
Crawford. 

A storm appeared drifting up from the neighborhood of the 
Notch, which lay four miles to the south-east of us ; but it blew 
by, and we had the prospect of fiiir weather the next day to 
ascend the mountain. We sallied out to view the objects of 
interest about the house. A pair of immense moose horns hunor 



WHITE MOUNTAINS. 183 

suspended on the front of the inn. The wearer of them had 
once trotted among these mountains. He was taken, we believe, 
and despoiled of his branching honors by old Ethan Crawford. 
Near them hung the sign of the " White Mountain Post Office." 
A pleasant idea — as it was for the accommodation of visiters, while 
here away from their homes. A poor little raccoon was semi- 
circling the length of his brief chain by the fence in the yard. 
Garrison characteristically insisted that he should have more range. 
Over the fence a full-grown bear ranged round a tall post in the 
centre of his precinct. The bear corresponded with the general 
scene better than the post. That would have better become a 
zoological garden or menagerie — for it stood in sight of the bear's 
native woods. We would have been glad to see the noble savage 
break loose from his chain and off to the woods on the side of 
Mount Washington. We crossed the road, and went up on to 
the Giant's Grave — the appropriate name of a mound rising out 
of the level plain, one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet long, 
some sixty broad, and thirty or forty feet high. The Ammonoo- 
suck glides pleasantly past its head. Ethan Crawford used to 
fire his swivel on the top of it at nightfall, to thunder up the 
mountain echoes. We found the breech of the old gun, blown 
off about mid way from the mouth. At sunset a party came in 
from the mountain on horseback — of gentlemen and ladies. It 
was quite picturesque to " see them on their winding way" and 
hear their merry shouts. We were glad to find some civil old 
acquaintance among them — civility in old acquaintance not being 
so frequent a thing noio with us, as it was once. A pleasanter 
thing still was to find an anti-slavery young lady in the party. 
We are sorry not to have learned her name. 

We found a very neat and elegant table at Fabyan's, and every 
accommodation about the house of corresponding character, ex- 
cept that drink was to be had at his bar. It was drink that 
brought down the great strength of Ethan Crawford to the ground. 
Let friend Fabyan take timely warning, and banish that Devil 
from his premises. 

We were surprised at the blast of a bugle from out before the 
house just at dusk, and more so, when we got out, to hear its 



Ig4 WHITE MOUNTAINS. 

echoes. Across the great meadow out westward from the road 
lay a pretty high mountain, stretching parallel with the road, and 
covered with a heavy growth of evergreen forest. The echoes 
came from that mountain. A young man had a tin trumpet 
about six feet long, which he blew and was answered in the most 
extraordinary manner from the mountain. He was rather awk- 
ward at it ; but presently Fabyan himself came out and wound 
that tin horn with a spirit and power that we never before wit- 
nessed — and the responses that came back from the mountain 
surpassed all music we ever heard from man. It was a simple, 
straight tin horn. Fabyan said that more than two thousand men 
had blown it; " but," said he, " there is not a man in the United 
States that can blow it with me." We could readily believe it. 
He had not the giant size of Crawford, but there was a go6d deal 
of the hero in him, and the gallant manner in which he winded 
that tin tube was most inspiring. He poised it against the dark, 
hemlock mountain side, and mustering his breath, sent it towards 
the woods, with an energy and spirit that made us start from our 
feet. A bold, abrupt bursting clarion blast trumped out from it, in 
three or four wild bugle notes. This of itself completely satisfied 
our inordinate love of wild music ; but after a few moments the an- 
swer would come from the mountain — first in distinct but softened 
echo, tone for tone, and as if from the extreme right of the woods, 
shortly after it echoed again, less distinctly and from a little to- 
ward the left — shortly after again still farther on, and still less 
distinctly, and so moving along the face of the woods as if a band 
of the Spirits of the mountain were marching there, to their un- 
earthly alchemy, till it terminated in a blast of all the echoes at 
once, mingled together and shed forth from the whole woods in 
one harmonious, trembling, ravishing strain, dying away over the 
ridge among the hollows of the mountains. Again the gallant 
trumpeter challenged the echoes on a different key, and the woods 
and mountains answered him accordingly, and he went through 
all the compass of the natural bugle. We cannot describe it. 
It was the more striking for the homely simplicity of the instru- 
ment — made by a Littleton tinker — and from its being totally 
unexpected. We have an ear for music, that we would not swap 



WHITE MOUNTAINS. 185 

with any body. We Tinoio good sounds. And we have heard 
music before. We have heard the bursts from the orchestra of 
the theatre, (a good while ago ;) the Handel and Hayden con- 
certs, and Zeuner's organ ; we have heard the wild lament of the 
Boston Brass Band, as with their nodding, black ostrich feathers, 
they swept through Summer street. We have heard the chants 
in Westminster Abbey, and the breath of the mighty organ tow- 
ering up from its chancel like a little church, as it reverberated 
away among its arches, and along its interminable aisles. But 
we never heard mortal sounds to be named with the echoes of 
Fabyan's tin horn ! We summon brother Garrison to bear wit- 
ness. 

The sun rose fair next morning, and immediately after break- 
fast we prepared to set out for the mountains. We got a fair 
view this morning, for the first time, of the top of Mount Wash- 
ington. We borrowed a fraction of a straw hat from friend 
Fabyan, and a coat that had seen White Mountain service. Our 
party consisted of eight, beside the guide. Three gentlemen, 
one of them a learned Professor, and three ladies, one the Pro- 
fessor's wife, the others, maiden ladies, we believe — a daughter 
of Dr. Payson, and a sister of the poet and literary trifler N. P. 
Willis. The guide was Oliver Fabyan, brother of our host. 
After riding perhaps a mile, we turned off to the left into the path 
to the mountain. Garrison's horse was " The Lady Wilder"-^ 
ours " The Fanny Ellsler," an Arabian and a fleet, beautiful 
traveller, but of a very mischievous disposition. She struck at 
us with her fore foot very spitefully, as we were passing, in the 
piazza of the tavern in the morning, where she stood tied. There- 
upon we selected her to carry us up the mountain. 

At entering the woods the guide directed us to ride single file, 
and to take distance, a precaution we soon found needful, for the 
gentleman who followed us coming up too near, Fanny Ellsler 
kicked up at him with great vivacity. We crossed the Ammonoo- 
suck into a meadow, and had a capital view of the mountains. 
Our path lay through woods most of the way for six miles to the 
foot of Mount Washington. The growth was very large — some 
birches and pines the very largest we ever saw growing. Fires 
16* 



jgg WHITE MOUNTAINS. 

were burning about, and had consumed the very soil, and the 
tree roots. Our company had ascertained our names, and con- 
sequently demeaned themselves towards brother Garrison and 
ourself as became persons of respectability towards persons of 
notoriety. There were no positive manifestations of annoyed 
reputability, that we noticed — but a very uncomfortable lack of 
freedom of remark and action. We did not humor it a great 
deal ; but it would have been far pleasanter to us to have had the 
congenial company we enjoyed in the Franconia woods. We 
hope anti-slavery will, by and by, be reckoned less ungenteel. 

We crossed the Ammonoosuck for the last time at the very foot 
of the mountain, and began our two mile ascent. The guide or- 
dered us to mind our distance, to bear forward as hard on the mane 
as possible, give the horses the entire reins, and take courage. 
We commenced our clamber, and found it an awkward business to 
keep the saddle. About a hundred rods up, the guide ordered a 
halt at a spring. We had got thirsty, and the water was glorious. 
The Professor took out his thermometer and thrust it into it; but 
we were so dry, we did not learn what he declared was the tem- 
perature. He had said something about barometers on the way, 
and about his being able to make one out of cane. We resumed 
our climbing, which soon began to try the breath of our steeds 
very sorely. Miss Ellsler would have cut a sorry figure on the 
dancing boards before we got half way up — though she retained 
her good temper to the top. Garrison's Lady lost two shoes. 
We persevered — not talking much — for it was terrible steep, and 
we had to mind our ways, crawling up precipices, and between 
trees, and round sharp rocks and among roots. We passed a 
wigwam or two, covered with spruce bark. We were obliged to 
halt frequently to breathe the panting horses. The dignified re- 
serve of our fellow-travellers abated a little before we got up out 
of the woods, and appeared considerably spent before we reached 
the verge of vegetation. The lessening trees at length announced 
th;it we were nearing the bare mountain side, which was an en- 
couragement that we began to need — and our poor steeds more 
tiian we. They panted pitifully, and looked as if they would im- 
plore us not to go any farther, though they seemed to understand 



WHITE MOUNTAINS. 187 

what they were about, and as if they had been there before. The 
trees diminished till our heads were among their boughs, and 
kept lessening — preserving their entire form, till they were mere 
dwarfs — very ugly looking, with their stout trunks not more than 
a foot high, and their sturdy, scraggy boughs. At last they be- 
came mere roots, crooking about on the surface of the soil. Then 
followed some kind of berry bush, very stinted, and lastly moss, 
and the dismal, naked, weather-worn rocks. 

After we got out on to the naked ridges, the climbing was ap- 
palling. We did not dare look at it. Occasionally, as we cast 
an eye to right and left, across our hip, we saw clear down the 
mountain a thousand feet or two, and so horribly precipitous that 
a false step would seem to have sent us to the very bottom. We 
should not have dared climb a step farther — scarcely on foot ; but 
people had ridden up and down there in safety — they had the day 
before, and said there was no danger. We inferred therefore it 
was safe. But to get down that steep we did not see it could be 
possible — any more than riding down the dome of St. Paul's. 
Miss Payson's heart failed her, and she said she could go no far- 
ther. We told her there could be no danger, and that we did 
not dare be afraid, and there was nothing to do but to go on. 
Ladies had gone up and down yesterday, we told her, on these 
very horses. She thereupon ventured on again awhile ; but it 
grew so frightful, she had to desist, and stopped. The Professor 
stopped with her, and we saw no more of them till we got half 
way back to Fabyan's from the foot of the mountain. 

When we passed the most dizzy ridges, our guide would hasten 
his ascent, and sing his wild songs to divert our apprehensions. 
We see him now — on his red horse, with our commissariat sad- 
dle-bags flapping against his sides, — high above our head, turning 
the point of a cliff", and singing " Some love to roam," at the top 
of his cry. " A chosen band, in a mountain land." We could 
realize the " land'' — but for his next line, 

" And a life in the woods for me," 

we had little fancy, — though we wished we were down some- 
where in the neighborhood of woods again. We felt a desperate 



1R§ WHITE MOUNTAINS. 

inclination, however, to go on up. We reached at length a more 
level region, and descried at some little distance in the thick mist 
the stone tavern. It is about a quarter of a mile from the sum- 
mit of the mountain. It is built of stones laid in moss, and roofed 
with rafters and long shingle. We saw on the way up where 
they made them, as high up, of course, as they could find shingle 
timber. We dined at the stone tavern, and the guide had brought 
up some water from the spring — luckily, for the mountain springs 
in the neighborhood of the tavern were all dried up — a thing the 
guide said he had never known before. The walls of the inn were 
inscribed around with the names of travellers who had stopped 
there. We left the horses here, and proceeded to the summit on 
foot. We can hardly conceive a more desolate spot than that 
stone tavern, or idea than of being alone there in the night, in a 
storm, or in the winter. It would truly be " out of Humanity's 
reach." Near the tavern the road came in from Tom Crawford's, 
who keeps at the Notch four miles from Fabyan's. But we no- 
ticed there was no guide hoard vp. 

We reached the top of Mount Washington about one o'clock. 
We could see nothing but a few rods of bare rocks around us, so 
thick was the white mist. A pile of stones, surmounted by a 
limb of a tree stuck up for a flag staff perhaps, — a few feet high, 
marked the highest spot on the summit. There we were, but 
had no prospect at all. Found some disabled honey bees crawl- 
ing about on the stone heap. The surface of the rocks was 
exceedingly ragged. Some cold cloud water lay in the hollows 
worn into them. The air was warmer than we expected to find 
it, and we felt no difference in breathing it on account of its 
rarity. The Professor could have told us why it was no colder 
up there. After staying about there something like an hour, 
waiting for a breath to clear away the mist and let us look off 
towards the ocean and Old England, &c., we were obliged to 
set out to go down. Somewhere near the stone tavern, however, 
the clouds went off and disclosed us a glorious prospect off to the 
westward. We could see the Franconia mountains, the entire 
White Mountain range as far as to the Notch, the successive 
peaks Jefferson Monroe and others, and the vast sweep from top 



WHITE MOUNTAINS. ]89 



to bottom of their sides, immense ridges, covered with woods and 
torn with slides, extending from each summit down to the world 
below. Mount Adams w as on our right — the others on the left. 
We are sorry they bear these presidential names. Mount Wash- 
ington is well enough, though he was nothing but a statesman, a 
hero, and a slaveholder. Mount Adams is something — and con- 
necting it with John Q.uincy, carries something of moral sublim- 
ity. But who can sublimate at the name of Monroe 1 We shall 
have a Mount Jackson, and a Mount Van Buren next, and a 
Mount Tyler ! Brother Leavitt, of the Emancipator, would put 
in for Mount Birney, and friend Tracy of the People's Advocate, 
for a Mount Hoyt ! We wish somebody had named the White 
Hills besides our president-worshippers. It belittles them mightily 
to associate them with that petty office. We like better the sound 
of Mont Blanc, or Chimborazo, or our own Moosehillock, or 
MoNADNOCK. But evcry one to their taste. 

We discovered on the ridge off down at our left two small, 
clear, beautiful ponds — as blue as the sky, and about as large as 
a pair of spectacles — the fountains of the Ammonoosuck. We 
could trace that stream from the foot of the mountain down below 
them, all the way through the seven mile woods to Fabyan's. All 
the vast valley lay revealed at our feet, or far, far down below us 
in a lower world, from which we seemed to be entirely removed 
and separated. To the north-east we had a prospect as far as the 
Green Mountains — and under an opening in the cloud, we saw 
the distinct summit of the great Mansfield Mountain, their high- 
est peak — which showed very finely. But we must hasten down, 
after turning aside towards Mount Adams, which now lay clear 
before us, and taking the view to the north-east. A tremendous 
precipice falls off behind the neck between Mounts Washington 
and Adams, apparently down to the very base, and nearly per- 
pendicular. We saw a brook in the valley below. It was the 
Androscoggin, and we could trace that stream from there all the 
way along an immense stretch of country, till it enlarged into a 
considerable river. 

As to our descent, we were astonished to find it not only prac-j 
ticable, but comparatively easy and safe. We gave our sagacious 



190 WHITE MOUNTAINS. 

and careful hort?es the reins — leaned back as far as we could on 
the saddles, and let them pick their way down the awful steeps. 
The world below looked to us as it must to a ballooncr looking 
over his car-railing, — only we were connected with it by some- 
thing besides air. We descended some of the steepest parts on 
loot, and let the horses go loose. Before we got down half way, 
however, we felt entirely at ease, and brother Garrison and we 
sung psalms, in good time and harmonv, a long way down through 
the woods. We reached the bottom in safety, and a little before 
sunset reached Fabyan's. We shall say no more of our enter- 
tainments there, than that our gallant landlord treated us to 
another serenade in the evening on his horn, with accompani- 
ments from the echo band in the mountains. He added to it this 
evening a shot or two from the fragment of the old gun, — which 
he made speak to fine effect by ramming and hammering it full 
of powder brought that day from below the Notch. The echoes 
were very impressive and awful. The Professor remarked, in the 
midst of Fabyan's concert, that it was the opinion of President 
Edwards that every leaf of a forest helped add something to the 
power of an echo. Tliere was a glorious moon over head. Some 
one of us noticed its splendor, when the Professor informed us 
that the mountains in it were about as high as the White Moun- 
tains. 

The next morning we took leave of our tavern company, and 
rode to spend Sunday in the broad aisle of the Notch. It was a 
fair morning, and we enjoyed a most pleasant and instructive ride 
with our beloved companion along the valley road. How much 
more i»leas;mt and profitable, and, we trust, more acceptable to 
God, than if spent in the temples of sect and superstition, prof- 
fering the sacrifices of Jerusalem and the mountains of Samaria 
to Him who is a Spirit, and who " seeketh such to worship Him, 
as worship in spirit and in truth!" Christianity feels itself at 
home every where and at all times, — none the more, however, 
among the mountains than on the plains. It does not have to go 
to the stupendous works of God to find evidence of His existence 
or His presence. It sees Him in the grass blade by the road- 
side, or the dust of the street, as well as in the mountain or the 



WHITE MOUxNTAINS. igi 



cloud. It feels the kingdom of God within the heart that has 
embraced it, — and goes not to find God in temples made with 
hands. 

We passed Thomas Crawford's "Notch House" four miles 
from Fabyan's. A little below his house we entered a chasm in 
the rocks — a precipice, almost perpendicular on the left hand, 
and sloping but little on the riglit. The pass is just wide enough 
to admit the narrow road and the narrower stream which flows 
beside it, and which is the river Saco. Passing a little on, the 
road turns suddenly to the lefl;, and leaves you abruptly upon a 
frightful abyss. It opens directly before you, and you seem about 
to plunge into it. It is a gulf some hundred feet in depth. The 
little stream is lost in it and disappears, — while you avoid the same 
fate, by turning to the left under the very eaves of the precipice 
which seems to overhang your path. Overawed and humbled, 
you move timidly down the steep and narrow road, — precipice 
above you on the left and belotc you on the right, guarded only by 
a fragile railing. Adown the channel of the stream lay hideous 
rocks in the attitude of having fallen there from the high cliffs above 
on your left, while along their terrible walls other masses of the 
cliffs look as if they were loosening to their fall, and 30U can hardly 
help feeling that the time of their descent has come. The moun- 
tain wall rises on either side apparently two thousand feet, and 
the scene between them is beyond description. The sides of the 
mountains on either hand are torn all to pieces, and you see notli- 
ing but havoc and ruin and desolation on every side, and on the 
vastest scale. Every thing looks as if thunder and lightning 
had struck it, or volcano hove it up — or earthquake rent it, or 
deluge flooded and washed it away. Rocks and gravel and sand, 
that have come down in slides from the mountains all along the 
Notch for h;Uf a dozen miles, present you with a hideous picture, 
relieved by nothing but its vastness. The road crosses and re- 
crosses the little stream, which seems to have been driven to shift 
its channel, from time to time, by the damming up of the slides. 
Soon after you enter the Notch, a cascade is seen descending 
eight hundred or a thousand feet from the mountain on the left. 
The long drought had nearly exhausted it, and its perpendicular 



192 WHITE MOUNTAINS. 

bed was bare. In ordinary seasons it is a gorgeous sight to see 
its high cascades leaping down the inaccessible ledges, and flash- 
ing in the sun. A few small trees and bushes grow along the 
bottom of the great gulf, to enliven the general desolation. The 
contrast in tliis respect with the verdant Franconia Pass is com- 
plete. 

We descended along the gravelly road, whose materials had 
been furnished from regions far above, about two miles from the 
entrance of the Notch, when we descried a solitary house — stand- 
ing a little elevated from the road on the right — uninhabited, and 
grown about with raspberry bushes, and an empty barn nearly 
opposite to it on the left. A tremendous slide, apparently of 
modern occurrence, had channeled down the mountain directly 
above it, to within a kw rods of the dwelling, where a ledgy 
mound diverted it to the left until it reached the foot, when it 
curved about to the right, and in a flood of gravel, rocks and sand 
swept just past the corner of the barn, across the valley. It was 
" The Willey House." Its dreadful story is well known. We 
explored its desolate interior. We went into the bed rooms where 
the slumbers of the ill-fated inmates had been broken on that 
terrible night by the voice of the slide, and into the kitchen 
where they had lived, with the desolate hearth around which they 
had often gathered and heard the evening storms howling along 
the Notch. The old cupboards and the chambers — we explored 
all, where these our fellow-creatures had once occupied. The 
walls and plastering were scrawled over with names. We wrote 
brother Garrison's and our own linked together on the wall with a 
fragment of coal. It might interest some abolitionist who should 
explore there after we are at rest. We went up the Slide nearly 
to its centre. It was of tremendous depth, and had ploughed out 
the ledges of rock and swept them to the gulf below with a ter- 
rible power. The house stood directly in its path, and had it 
gone a kw rods farther in its first direction, it would have passed 
right over it. The little mound of defence turned it aside, and 
the affrighted family rushed out of safety into its current, and 
perished. 

The aspect of the region here is peculiarly desolate^ and this 



WHITE MOUNTAINS. I93 

lonely house is in fall keeping with the scenery around. As far 
up the Notch as you can see, all is torn and ravaged with the 
successive slides, as if Ruin had driven its mighty ploughshare 
over and over again from top to bottom of the lacerated moun- 
tains. The rains are said to fall here in floods, and the darkness 
and cold in winter to be of almost polar intensity. After linger- 
ing some hours in this valley of death, we resumed our way along 
a most beautiful and gently descending road — fringed with flow- 
ers and wild grass — about six miles to the elder Crawford's, at the 
south-eastern terminus of the Notch. The mountains retreated 
gradually as we went on, till the narrow pass expanded into the 
broad intervales along the Saco, and that stream, which had en- 
tered the Notch side by side with us, sharing equally the con- 
tracted passage with our scanty road, had grown a river, with its 
toll bridges and its canoes — when we reached the pretty town of 
Conway. We there passed the night, meeting a gang of slave 
owners from the South, mousing their heartless way up to see our 
White Mountains. We could hardly imagine what they wanted 
to go there for. We should think they would much rather go 
alligatoring in Oakafennoke or Dismal Swamp ! They found out 
Garrison, and the way they glowered at him next morning from 
behind one another, would have " been a caution" to a painter. 
They told the tavern folks they wished they had him at the South. 
Poor nerveless murderers ! They would not dare look him in 
the face. 

But we must break off" — our sheet is overflowed, our pen-arm 
tired out, and our readers' patience spent. We promise to write 
no more of these mountain jaunts, but short articles in future, on 
less " extraneous topics." We hope our beloved fellow-traveller 
will give his own continuance of our tour as he has begun it. If 
he will, we will furnish it to our readers, by way of compensation 
and atonement, 
17 



194 POETRY. 



POETRY. 



[From the Herald of Freedom of Nov. 5, 1841.] 

We are troubled to find it to fill our " Corner." We can find 
verses enough, but they are not equal to the station of " Poet's 
Corner" in an anti-slavery sheet, these days of fiery trial. Anti- 
slavery poetry should be a stream of living fire. We examine 
our little exchange list, and we find nothing beside the senti- 
mentalism of pro-slavery brains, or rant about the ballot box, a 
theme as heartless to us as the billiard table. Anti-slavery poetry 
goes clad in " words that burn" like lava. It demands the nerve 
of Pierpont — his brief, palpitating, almost szqjprcssed words. Po- 
etry " rolls her eye" " with a fine frenzy" indeed, when she sees 
Humanity chained. She is indignant, hard on the borders of 
frenzy. She loses her self-command. She cannot retain it, and 
she need not, and ought not. Self-command were treason in the 
poet when he looks on Human Slavery. 

Where is Whittier now, that we no more see his verses stream- 
ing up like a " meteor to the troubled air?" What has palsied 
his muse ? Why does he no longer furnish anti-slavery with the 
poetry for her movement 1 New Organization has touched his 
glorious genius with her torporific wand — and he soars not above 
the dunghill of Third Party. He ought to be in the blue sky, or 
rather the stormy sky, for we have no blue over us. He ought to 
be abroad in the moral tempest — letting down sheets of fire — for 
anti-slavery to inflame her press with. We call on him to come 
to life again. We demand it of him. We summon him to sac- 
rifice even his poet pride, and into the field again, although the 
display of his gorgeous crest would be an admission that he had 
faltered. ' No matter for admissions. He has the Promethean 
fire. The cause wants it. It don't need it. That is — it can 
live without it. It has lived without it. But it wants it. It has 
right to it. He cannot innocently withhold it. We claim it at 
his hands for the slave. The slave will want liberty a little the 
longer for his withholding it. Anti-slavery marches irregularly 
for lack of the music of his numbers. She can't keep step. She 



POETRY. 195 

listens for the strain of his trumpet — its old clarion blast — that 
made the land quake in the early years of our Revolution. But 
she listens in vain. He has hung his bugle on the dog-wood 
boughs of New Organization, or the limbs of the swamp " Cedar." 
He plays, to be sure, at times for 3d Party — but it is on the ffe. 
Anti-slavery can't march after that. She has no ear for it. She 
cannot " time" her high " footsteps" to the fife and drum. She 
wants the moral trumpet. Cannot Whittier again give it breath ? 

And Pierpont — we have a demand on him. He sees the ir- 
regular footstep of our anti-slavery forlorn hope — for lack of 
moral, martial music. Our phalanx is on the steady advance — 
but it loses a step now and then. It is out of line. We want 
the music. Music is every thing in a battle. We will conquer 
without it, but then we want it. 

O that we could blow the anti-slavery horn ! We would find 
our own music then, and would not be asking these trumpeters to 
come and play. And if we have to ask them, before they blow, 
they can do us no service. Their trumpets would give an uncer- 
tain sound, and prepare no one for the battle. They must be 
volunteers. They must give anti-slavery breath to their alchemy, 
or it will only dispirit our ranks. We want no Swiss Guard mu- 
sic. We care nothing for it. No matter for its glittering brass 
instruments flashing in the sun. Anti-slavery, self-moved, breath- 
ing at the head of the host — though it blows through White Moun- 
tain Fabyan's long tube of tin, the rough Conch shell, or the 
ruder Ram's Horn — that is the inspiration we want. Pierpont 
can discourse, if he will, on his graceful instrument. We point 
him to the plantation, and then to the entire country backing up 
the scenes of the plantation. His own country — enslaved and 
enslaving — the very Religion of the land forging fetters and plat- 
ting whips for the infernal service. Need we more than show 
him this, to set his fervid soul on fire 1 If he will not flame at 
this, his fire is false. " The light" he strays after, is not " from 
Heaven." We point him to the plantation and the country, and 
then to our vacant Corner — empty and silent for want of an anti- 
slavery muse in the land. A word to the wise is enough — see if 
it is to the Genius. 



196 SECTARIAN WORSHIP. 

SECTARIAN WORSHIP. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Nov. 12, IS-ll.] 

We can laugh at " Mahometan delusion," and popish super- 
stition, as it prostrates itself before its gross and degrading idols, 
but we are blind as bats to the equally ridiculous and impious 
mockery of our own " worship." Anti-slavery must cry out 
against it — for it is made the Chinese wall in the way of the 
peaceful abolition of slavery. We sat last Sunday at our window, 
meditating an effort for our little engine of Humanity, when we 
were recalled from anxious thought, by the passage through the 
streets of the broken-up meetings. They went by in counter 
directions — the Orthodox, the Unitarian, and the Baptist, inter- 
mingled with Episcopacy and Methodism from their more distant 
Rimmon houses of worship. We were mightily struck with their 
demeanor. It was wholly different from that of free, intelligent, 
happy christians. It was the demeanor and aspect of devotees, 
of implicit followers of some blind guide. They looked no more 
as they commonly look, than they were dressed like their common 
dress. They had a Sunday aspect on as well as a Sunday dress. 
They had a Sunday gait too. They looked Sunday, and icalked 
Sunday. Does Christianity walk and look thus 1 Do the follow- 
ers of Christ have two gaits and two faces ? Do they go naturally 
and eagerly through the week days, and as if they were in ear- 
nest, — and after the trash of this world, which perishes in the 
using — and then,when Sunday comes, elongate their faces, and turn 
solemn in their gait and aspect, and think thus to propitiate God, 
who looketh on the heart 1 Is this Christianity ? No, no. The 
spirit of Christ works on the every-day life. It shapes the daily 
transactions. It is safe to meet, and do business with. It is safe 
to buy of, and sell to, and talk with. It cannot wrong you, for it 
loves you as it loves itself. It won't harm you to save its life. 
Is it safe to meet meeting-house religion, and do business with it — 
buy and sell with it — or leave your interests in its hands, or have 
you not got to look with all your eyes, and take care of yourself, 
when you deal with it 1 



RHODE ISLAND MEETING. 197 

Friends, beware how you circumvent yourselves with this meet- 
ing-house religion. It will fail you like the spider's web. Not 
when you die merely — it will fail before. It fails you now. You 
feel no support in it — no confidence — no consolation. It is not 
Christianity — under whatever denominational name you may fol- 
low it. Its teachers are " blind leaders" and " of the blind," if 
i/oii follow them. We loo\ upon you all, streaming in procession 
to and from your forbidden temples (forbidden of Christ) as we 
would on the deluded Hindoos trooping up and down, to and from 
the sacred Ganges — or going to Juggernaut ; or on the poor en- 
snared Catholic. The American slave can never have his liberty 
among such a people. 



RHODE ISLAND MEETING. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Dec. 3, 1841.] 

We resume our account of the general anniversary of the State 
Society at Providence. Rhode Island, we should think, from 
our glance of observation, aside from any information we had ob- 
tained otherwise, rather a peculiar people. They are, we should 
say, a freer — more untrammeled, less regulated folk, than the 
other New Englanders we have known. They are more like 
David's men in the cave of Adullam, as to heterogeneousness of 
character. They have not formally bowed down their individu- 
ality before the Dagons of party and sect, as the masses have in 
the other States. There is therefore more hope of them. Noth- 
ing is so hopeless as orderly suhjcction to sect. There is sec- 
tarianism in the little State — especially in Providence. That 
Baptist College on the hill, and that steeple that runs up two 
hundred feet into the sky, at the hill's foot, the pride of Rhode 
Island's " sacred architecture," are not the only images sectarian 
idolatry has set up there. The Rev. Dr. Tucker, of the ortho- 
dox Congregational order, has got his mosque bedecked with a 
platoon of pillars in imitation of some heathen temple abroad — • 
and topped out, in smart imitation of the Boston State House, 
J7* 



198 RHODE ISLAND MEETING. 

with a real commonwealth dome. The honorable Episcopalians 
have got an old theatre fitted up into a church. It is a terrible 
sombre-looking pile. It looks like tragedy, without any comic 
after-piece to relieve it. Universalism has got a pile as tall as 
any of them, where they go to persuade themselves out of their su- 
perstitions, which nevertheless doubtless continue to haunt them 
all the while. Their pile looks as sacred and solemn as any of 
the pagodas. The Unitarians have got an Athenian temple — one 
of the most beautiful-looking things ever reared to Minerva or 
Apollo in old Greece. Methodism has got a " where to lay its 
head" also, though we forget, this moment, whereabouts it thrusts 
up its steeple — pretty impudently, no doubt, for Methodism does 
not fear the face of clay, and is determined not to be behind the 
grandest ; and there they all stand, ensnaring what worsliippers 
they severally may. But in no one of them is a single unqua/ijied 
principle of Christianity ever preached, unless by accident. It 
would not be tolerated in any of them, unless they differ from all 
others of their clan. They are consecrated to religious partyism, 
Christianity new organized, and adulterated, and ruined. Were 
Christ on earth, and to go into any one of them, as He did into 
the synagogues of old, they would take Him by His seamless coat 
collar (unless more unceremoniously) and drag him out, as Rev- 
erend brother Bouton's Swiss guards dragged Christ's disciple, 
Stephen S. Foster, out of the Old North steeple-house in Con- 
cord, a few Sundays ago. 

While we are upon the architectural department of Providence, 
we will just tell our readers of a building or two more. The 
Arcade, an establishment for traders' and milliners' shops, is one 
of the nicest structures in the town. It extends from street to 
street, about two hundred feet in length — lighted overhead, from 
the sky. A wide, broad aisle through the centre, from end to 
end, with a row of shops for traders on each side in the lower 
story, — where vanity may shop it, and gentility lounge or prome- 
nade, in all weathers ; the upper story retreats, and contains rows 
of milliners' shops, with a gallery-walk in front, — very pretty, and, 
we should think, convenient and useful. Splendid rows of gran- 
ite pillars sustain the gables of the roof at each end, forming two 



RHODE ISLAND MEETING. 199 

very handsome and imposing fronts. Real granite — not sham, 
like Doctor Wayland's stone University. We went, by the way, 
close lip to that Baptist school of the prophets. At a distance, we 
were struck with its commanding, heavy, solid appearance. But 
we had had some experience of the character of certain institu- 
tions, and so went a little nigher. It still looked ponderous, and 
very like honest granite. But on persevering inspection, we dis- 
cerned the dogs' hair and the lime, and it turned out to be genuine 
imitation — wood, daubed with untempered mortar, real counter- 
feit, — and behold, up on the sides of the stone edifice, the mask 
had peeled off, and disclosed the lathing. Pretty illustrative, 
thought we, of this whole concern. A specious outside — but 
hollow and sham within. An ostentatious show of learning, with 
shallowness and pretension to back it up. Right off in front of 
its airy common — (it has a real common, one that will remain 
there when the trumpery Institutes are all swept off into Provi- 
dence river, at the foot of the hill,) stands the mansion of its 
Reverend and limited principal, Doctor Francis Wayland, who 
has set narrower " limits to human responsibilities," a good deal, 
than he has to his princely abode. We met a poor colored man 
on the Green, and asked him where Dr. Wayland lived. He dis- 
figured his face, and set down his two baskets, and very reverently 
pointed it out, and said, as solemn as could be, " There's Doctor 
Wayland's." The poor fellow said it, as it were, within an inch 
of his life. It was a solemn sight — a real palace for a rabbi 
nabob. It was in that house, probably, — in his holy study — with 
his gown and green spectacles on, that the profound Doctor wrote 
that spider's web essay, to prove that the people of this country 
were under no obligation whatever to abolish slavery in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia. The way he did it was by curtailing man's 
" responsibilities" to do his duty. And just so soon as the Doc- 
tor got these responsibilities curtailed — docked, " limited"-like, — 
why, then he proved, as clear as a mud-hole riled by a sow, that 
the people had no more to do with abolishing their slave-holding 
than the man in the moon. He demonstrated, with real, sham, 
university logic, that they were under no obligation about it, and 
that the abolitionists were a pack of mad-caps. 



200 RHODE ISLAND MEETING. 

There is a great Quaker college up back in the fields, where the 
broad-brimmed lads are scientifically instructed into the learned 
mysteries of George Fox and the New Testament. A Quaker 
novv-a-days, we suppose, must be learned, or he will be behind 
the age. The honor of the denomination must be kept up, and 
nothing will maintain it but liberal learning. That is the stay 
and staff of all the denominations. The Free Will Baptists and 
Methodists are thus providing for the respectability of their 
respective brotherhoods. They must have skill to read the 
Testament in the original tongues, to be able to be " wise unto 
salvation !" If the " Cape Cod Come-outers," as they are called, 
get numerous, and degenerate into a popular, respectable sect, 
they will be building theological seminaries on some of the sand 
hills along the Cape. Learning is "the one thing needful" in 
religion. 

Close by the Quaker college is a Refuge for orphans, or for 
poor children of some class, built by some horse-leech or other 
who sucked up the life-blood of their poor dads, and held it in 
his maw while he lived, and then — having no further occasion for 
it, and unable to carry it away with him, but obliged to leave it 
behind, in Rhode Island, vested it in an atoning Asylum for the 
children he had helped beggar. We would not disturb the ashes 
of this poor founder, if he were such a leech — but we would warn 
all absorbers of the means of human living, not to think of cir- 
cumventing God, by heaping around them, as long as they live, 
the means' of comfort for a thousand, who must be poor and des- 
titute by the means, — and then, when they can live no longer, 
pile up some great, ostentatious show of charity for its dispersion, 
as from his own benevolent fountain. The better way is to let 
the people have their own as they go along. Their children 
won't be likely to need an Asylum then. 

The Atheneum is a most tasteful, beautiful building, of real 
stone — planted finely in the side of the hill — overlooking the 
town. We saw within it Denon's famous work on Egypt, in 
twenty-five enormous folios — kept in a depot resembling an Egyp- 
tian temple covered over with hieroglyphics. It stood in the centre 
of the grand library and reading room. In another department 



RHODE ISLAND MEETING. 201 

Imng a wonderful picture in Mosaic — of the ruins of Paestum. 
Temples, Country, Animals and Travelers visiting — all of minute, 
precious stones, planted endtcays in the surface — ground smooth, 
and polished, with natural colors, surpassing in animation any 
thing we had ever seen of painting. The picture, some six feet 
long and two wide, was said to weigh five hundred pounds, and 
to cost some six thousand dollars, and to contain five millions of 
stones. It was a picture to the life. 

One more edifice, and we hurry to the anti-slavery meeting. 
It was a " log cabin." Aboriginality — or rather old-settlerism — 
has had occasion to set up a wigwam in the thick of this popu- 
lous town. Its patriotic, dignified uses having passed away, and 
its hard-cider cask converted into a cold-water keg, it is in pos- 
session of the reformed drunkards of Providence. Let the same 
fate speedily befall all other hard-cider cabins in the land. We 
heard a noble, ranting fellow — one of the lecturers — telling how 
a Reverend Divine had shut his mouth, off in some of the back 
towns, because he talked too unsolemnly somehow, for the holy 
building he was in. May these lioly buildings all soon share the 
uses to which this kindred cabin is now devoted. 

We hurry to Franklin Hall. There were Abby Kelley, and 
Parker Pillsbury, and Frederick Douglass, (the fugitive Othello,) 
and John A. Collins, and John B. Chandler, and John Pierpont, 
(a spectator,) and Thomas Davis, and George L. Clarke, and 
William Aplin, and William Lloyd Garrison, and William Ad- 
ams, and Joseph Sisson, and we don't know how many more. 
We wish we had not begun to mention them, for we must le ive 
out " five hundred as good as they," as King Harry said of Percy 
at Chevy Chase. 

The meeting looked a good deal free. The President looked 
like any thing but a gag-master general ; and more like a little 
child, than a tyrant. 

The subject of Rhode Island's new constitution draft came up. 
It seems the little Commonwealth has gone on, ever since the 
Revolution, without a constitution. She wants one like " the na- 
tions round about." Her power of suffrage is in the hands, un- 
der her old royal charter, of the landholders. The Constitution 



o{)o RHODE ISLAND MEETING. 

proposes to put it in the hands of all the people, with a small 
personal property qualification, we don't know how much, — small 
enough to extend the right, it was said, to some fourteen thou- 
sand voters. To make it go down with the people, the pitiful 
creatures inserted a color qualification. They must put in " white" 
— the color of the gulls you see winging their uncouth flight up 
and down the harbor, — to shut out three or four hundred colored 
people, who otherwise might, — when they get money enough, go 
to the free and equal polls, to choose their masters. The patrons 
of the new Constitution had assumed the name of the " Free 
Suffrage party." l^he'ix freedom showed itself in making a man's 
hue the test of his rights. They felt free to enslave a man if he 
was not as white as a diaper. One or two of their demagogues 
came into the meeting. One was a Dr. Brown, a steam doctor, 
whose political morality seemed about as high as that of a railroad 
engine with a Jim Crow car to it; or a church with a "nigger 
pew." A vote was early passed declaring the meeting open to 
all speakers and voters. The Doctor gave us an expose of his 
white ethics. It seemed he wanted to get suffrage for ihe w'hite 
folks, in order, by and hi/ to extend it to the black. It reminded 
us of the fable of the fox and goat in the well. They had fallen 
into one — that was dry, but too deep to jump out of. Reynard 
being a little selfish, and a trifle sly, proposed to the goat a mode 
of getting both out. You rear up on your hind legs, says he, 
and plant your horns firmly against the stoning of the well, and 
I will leap up on to your head and horns, and spring from thence 
on to the brink of the well, and being cut myself, will contrive 
then to get you out also, — whereas here, you know, I can do 
nothing at ail to help you. The goat thought it stood to reason, 
and having great confidence in Esquire Fox's honesty, complied 
with his proposal, and made her head his stepping stone. The 
fox leaped out and escaped ; but losing all solicitude for his late 
companion in affliction, uttered some proverb to the goat about 
trusting Foxes — shook his brush at her from the well's brink, and 
scampered off, leaving her to her meditations. We think the 
" Free Suffrage" party want to make a stepping stone — a goat's 
head and horns — of the colored people and abolitionists; and after 



RHODE ISLAND MEETING. 203 

they get enfranchised, they would shake a fox's tail in their 
faces. 

But the illustration is wanting in one particular. This lack 
of suffrage is not like being down in the well ; and getting it, 
would not have any tendency to help the colored people out. It 
would prove a worthless boon in their hands. The white folks 
would not acknowledge them as equals if they were nominally 
voters. They never would consent to their being candidates for 
any thing — they Avould treat them as " niggers" still. 

The colored people and their friends should never consent to 
such a constitution, but scout it with utter contempt. Our coun- 
sel would be to them to pay it little attention, except as an oc- 
casion to push the livelier the grand warfare against the pro- 
slavery bulwarks of the country. The abolition of slavery by the 
power of free principles, is the only consummation that can avail 
to yield the colored man a single right or privilege. 

The " free suffrage" Doctor fell into the merciless hands of 
Garrison, who tore him limb from limb. We never saw so 
tremendous a triumph of morals over political profligacy. We 
again lament the lack of reporters in our meetings. Some of the 
richest flowers of human speech, the rarest bursts of eloquence, 
and the noblest sentiments are lost to the world in our anti-slavery 
meetings. The world is not there to hear them, and abolitionists 
can't remember them. They are too common for them to re- 
member. They multiply in every meeting. They abound in 
almost every anti-slavery speech — for it comes from the depths 
of the heart, and when the heart speaks, it is eloquent. It is the 
head that fails when it attempts it. Hearts talk at the anti-slavery 
meetings. 

Friday evening was chiefly occupied by colored speakers. The 
fugitive Douglass was up when we entered. This is an extraor- 
dinary man. He was cut out for a hero. In a rising for Liberty, 
he would have been a Toussaint or a Hamilton. He has the 
" heart to conceive, the head to contrive, and the hand to ex- 
ecute." A commanding person — over six feet, we should say, in 
height, and of most manly proportions. His head would strike a 
phrenologist amid a sea of them in Exeter Hall, and his voice 



204 RHODE ISLAND MEETING. 

would ring like a trumpet in the field. Let the South congrat- 
idate herself that he is a fugitive. It would not have been safe 
ior her if he had remained about the plantations a year or two 
longer. Douglass is his fugitive name. He did not wear it in 
slavery. We don't know why he assumed it, or who bestowed it 
on him — but there seems fitness in it, to his commanding figure 
and heroic port. As a speaker he has few equals. It is not decla- 
mation — but oratory, power of debate. He watches the tide of 
discussion witli the eye of the veteran, and dashes into it at once 
with all the tact of the forum or the bar. He has wit, argument, 
sarcasm, pathos — all that first-rate men show in their master 
efforts. His voice is highly melodious and rich, and his enunci- 
ation quite elegant, and yet he has been but two or three years 
out of the house of bondage. We noticed that he had strikingly 
improved, since we heard him at Dover in September. We say 
thus much of him, for he is esteemed by our multitude as of an 
inferior race. We should like to see him before any New Eng- 
land legislature or bar, and let him feel the freedom of the anti- 
slavery meeting, and see what would become of his inferiority. 
Yet he is a thing, in American estimate. He is the chattel of 
some pale-faced tyrant. How his owner would cower and shiver 
to hear him thunder in an anti-slavery hall ! How he would shrink 
away, with his infernal whip, from his flaming eye when kindled 
with anti-slavery emotion ! And the brotherhood of thieves, the 
posse comitntus of divines, we wish a hecatomb or two of the 
proudest and flintiest of them, were obliged to hear him thunder 
for human liberty, and lay the enslavement of his people at their 
doors. They would tremble like Belshazzar. Poor Wayland ! 
we wish he could have been pegged to a seat in the Franklin 
Hall, the evening the colored friends spoke. His "limitations" 
would have abandoned him like the " baseless fabric of a vision." 
Sanderson of New Bedford, Cole of Boston, and Stanley of 
North Carolina, followed Douglass. They all displayed excellent 
ability. Sanderson and Stanley's ppe kiig of a high order. Stan- 
ley was a young man, apparently about two and twenty — exceed- 
ingly black — an elegant figure, rather daintily dressed. He will 
dress less, as he frequents free meetings, and experiences the 



RHODE ISLAND MEETING. 205 

treatment of a man. He announced his name, v\hen called for by 
the chair, and his place — " not Stanley of Congress," he added, 
with unaffected disdain and dignity — which drew him a storm of 
welcome from the meeting. We had had a " Douglass," from 
the names at Flodden Field, and now we were to have a " Stan- 
ley;" and as he was mounting the platform, we could hardly re- 
frain from greeting him with an 

" On, Stanley, on !' 

" He was not the Congress Stanley," he repeated, " nor would 
he stoop to rank himself with the Wises or the Bynums of the 
South ;" and if he did not surpass the Virginia debater in " excel- 
lency of speech or man's wisdom," he was truer far to humanity 
and to liberty, and he acquitted himself in a speech of some 
thirty or forty minutes to very great acceptance, and closed with 
periods that, in a young debutant at Washington, would have 
won the gratulations of the old hackneyed authorities in politics 
and debate. 

These were the inferior race. These the young black men, 
who, ten years ago, would have been denied entrance into such an 
assembly of whites, except as waiters or fiddlers. Their attempts 
at speaking would have been met with jeers of astonishment. It 
would have amazed the superior race as the ass's speech did Ba- 
laam. Now they mingle with applause in the debates with Gar- 
rison and Foster and Phillips. Southern slavery — " hold thine 
own !" — when the kindred of your victims are thus kindling north- 
ern enthusiasm on the platform of liberty and free debate ! 

We are summoned away to a discussion meeting at Chichester, 
appointed by Reverend Rufus A. Putnam, new-organized Con- 
gregational clergyman of that place — and must break off here, 
and accompany Parker Pillsbury on a night jaunt thither, with 
prospect of a return under the midnight moon. But we go for 
humanity — so " cheerily O, cheerily O." Anti-slavery will keep 
us warm and wide awake amid the "nipping and eager" breath 
of winter and " witching time o'night." 
18 



206 LECTURE ON ELOCUTION. 

LECTURE ON ELOCUTION. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Dec 10, 184L] 

We attended Mr. Weston's lecture and recitations, of which we 
gave notice last week, and were not disappointed in our anticipa- 
tions that he would lecture interestingly. He did, remarkably so, 
though he had but a handful audience, a circumstance not likely 
to enhance rhetorical power. It is a long time since we witnessed 
human imitations on the stage, and will be longer before we shall 
Hgain, probably. But we do not remember any speaking from 
the Wallacks and Conways of that day, better than friend Weston 
gave us in his few recitations the other evening. He spoke the 
prayer of Hamlet's uncle, (prayers in public are too often spoken, 
we fear — though not in so good imitation of devotion) the fall of 
Babylon, Monk Lewis' Maniac, and the musings of a bloody vil- 
lain of a painter, who had ordered a captive put on the rack, and 
was watching his dying agonies, that he might transfer them to a 
picture he was painting, of the fabled Prometheus with the vul- 
tures at his liver. The tones and articulation and attitudes of 
the lecturer were very excellent, and at times he rose to a high 
perception of the power and spirit of his author. But it was his 
voice and utterance of words — his speech, in which we took most 
interest. The excitement of the pieces we did not care to in- 
dulge in, and do not incline to commend to others. It is not a 
very profitable indulgence, though better perhaps than rum or 
politics. It is not friendly to the workings of humanity, or the 
promptings of duty and conscience. There is excitement enough 
of a nobler and safer kind. But there is a power and a skill in 
the mere human voice, and our lecturer seemed intimately and 
thoroughly acquainted with them. He had trained his own, which 
we understand was not originally the best, and which seemed to 
us to have had some serious impediment in it, to a high degree of 
excellence. It was clear — melodious and of great strength and 
compass, and it seemed to refresh rather than fatigue him, to ex- 
ert it. It was refreshing to hear it, instead of exhausting — as 
voices of public speakers often are, especially pulpit voices. lie 



LECTURE ON ELOCUTION. 207 

could articulate marvellously. He ran off several long strings 
of alliteration, with the accuracy and volubility of a bird. His 
" Peter Piper, picking his peck of pickled peppers," for instance, 
was articulated with an accuracy and distinctness that we can 
scarcely write it with, and as rapid as thought. This human 
voice is a marvellous instrument. Yet how few can tune it ! — 
as it is almost universally out of tune, from going to school and 
college, or other mishaps. Few can tune it, and fewer still play 
upon it, in speech or music. We read of " the sweet music 
of speech" — but how little we hear of it ! There seems to be 
as few good players on the speech organ as on the violin — as 
few, we mean, who can give to the voice its due, as justice is 
done sometimes to that king instrument. Indeed we don't know 
but there are as many Paganini's on the fiddle (though there 
has been but one) as on this human pipe of ours. There have 
been cunning players, so far as sound and stop were concerned, 
but they lacked the spirit — for it is not melody alone that belongs 
to this instrument — like that 

" hidden 

In Memnon's statue — which at sunrise played." 

These are living statues. They play spontaneously, and have 
not to wait for the rising sun, or other outward influences to give 
them breath. How important that they play well ! God has 
mighty uses for their music, especially in speech — to us far more 
musical than singing. And what an amount of it ! — the whole, 
vast talk of the great human family — and they are a sociable 
family. But their speech has been marred with other jarrings 
than the old " confusion" at Babel. It is all out of tune. Per- 
haps nothing but tuning of the discordant heart can ever bring 
it right again. 

We were saying that good speaking wcs rare. There is as 
much of it perhaps at the bar as any where in the business profes- 
sions, but we hardly remember a good strain of it there. There 
occurs to us now one instance — but it was from that bar where 
the pleader speaks in his own behalf. It was from a prisoner. 
It was his plea of " not guilty." A short speech — only " two 



208 CLERICAL "JUGGLERY." 

words." But it made a deep impression on our ear and memory, 
and on the hearing of a crowded court-house, who seemed sen- 
sibly touched by its clear, deep, harmonious intonations. We 
never heard words better spoken. We well remember the ad- 
miration expressed by the leading orator of the state, who was 
])resent. It seemed to awaken all his emulation, and he had 
enough of it, and for a moment he seemed almost jealous of the 
prisoner. He did not envy his whole case, be sure — but he would 
freely have given all his fees for the power to utter any two words, 
as that prisoner did his thrilling " not guilty !" Mighty is the 
power of the human voice, and most rare its exercise in unabated 
majesty. 



CLERICAL " JUGGLERY." 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Dec. 10, 1841.] 

We don't know but we are over "jealous" of our friends the 
priesthood, but a little instance came across us the other evening, 
which, if not a " trifle light as air," is a straw to show the way of 
the clerical wind. We were reading aloud to our fire-side circle 
at home (instigated by attending friend Weston's lecture doubt- 
less) Campbell's beautiful " Address to the Mummy." We found 
it in the Reverend Doctor Porter's Rhetorical Analysis. It is not 
a production that needs much amendment, or could undergo 
much tinkering, without its being discovered. Something sounded 
wrong as we were reading in the concluding line of the fourth 
stanza. The measure seemed clumsy, and the sense clumsier 
still. The interrogator was conjecturing Mummy's vocation. 

" Perhaps thou wcrt a priest — if so, my struggles 
Are vain : — Egyptian priests ne'er owned their juggles." 

W^hy limit to Egyptian priests this disinclination to own jug- 
glery — when it is universal with the Priesthood, to a proverb? 
We at once suspected jw^^/cry had been practised on Campbell's 
verse, and it occurred to us that we had once before — some time 
ago — thought so, and found on examination that it was so — that 



CLERICAL "JUGGLERY" 209 

the phraseology had been changed from something offensive to 
one more welcome to the clerical ear. " But then Doctor Por 
ter would not have mutilated Campbell's poetry — especially as it 
would be so certain of detection !" Doctors of Divinity will do 
almost any thing when it will serve a clerical turn ; and as for 
detection — it has no terrors for them. They are the judges. On 
recurring to Campbell, we found the lines run thus : — 

" Perhaps thou wert a priest — if so, my struggles 
Are vain; — for [0"priesteraft never owns its juggles." 

A little smoother measure this, and considerably more general 
in its opinion of the priesthood, than the Reverend Doctor's — 
jugglery. " Priestcraft," Doctor, not " Egyptian priests." Egyp- 
tian priests were as honest as Andover priests, and as little given 
to juggling. "Owns," not "owned." The time had to be 
forged, as well as the place. The present tense was the true 
one, and the Doctor put in the past. Campbell meant England's 
priesthood, as well as Egypt's — of Mummy's adopted, as well as 
his native country — the poet's own times, as well as those of the 
"primeval race" of the "posthumous man" he was addressing 
And he included New England as well as old, and being cotem 
porary with the Reverend Doctor, he meant the Doctor's time, as 
well as place. 

And why should priestcraft own its juggles ? No juggler will 
own it. All craft will juggle, and the priesthood is a craft, and 
the craftiest of the whole necromantic catalogue. It is craft in 
its very existence, since Christ has abolished the order by the 
introduction of Christianity. Priesthood is an imposition on 
Christianity in all its other branches, as well as in the popedom, 
the grand conjuror of the brotherhood. Martin Luther denounced 
it as a heresy in Christianity — and equally so, under the names 
of clergy and of priest. And the denunciation includes all our 
modern array of clerical ministers, bishops, elders and other rev- 
erends. They are all an imposition and a craft. The New Tes- 
tament is full of disownment of the whole of them. They find 
the names there, but not the thing. They assume the thing, or 
set it up, and assume the scripture name for it, and then quote 
18* 



210 POETRY. 

scripture as an authority. Christianity strips man of every pre- 
rogative which distinguishes the modern clergy, both Protestants 
and Catholics. They can find no nook or corner in the kingdom 
of heaven, or rest for the sole of their feet there. 

We may have done injustice to Doctor Porter. He may not 
have invented the Egyptian amendment, and only have copied it. 
But the Doctor vv^as a learned professor. He knew it was a fraud 
on the original. He had read Campbell, and it was as crafty to 
copy it,^as to invent it. But it was for a school book. It was 
for the young mind. It would not do to have words, irreverent 
of the clergy, go out among the young, in the school books. It 
would not do to have the " young idea taught how to shoot" the 
clergy, especially in a clergyman's elements of archery, and so 
they rubbed out " priestcraft," and put in " Egyptian." Verily 
it was a " going down to Egypt for help." 

But we are making too much of this. If it is a clerical " straw 
to show the way of the wind," we do not want straws, when the 
land and the times abound with broad and palpable weather-cocks 
in the pulpits, as well as on their steeples, to give us the way of 
the air currents. We will mention this, though, as a curiosity, 
and it may rescue a fine line of Campbell's from adulteration and 
forgery. 



POETRY. 
[From the Herald of Freedom of Dec. 10, 1841.] 

We are partially supplied, by the above tribute of a bereaved 
anti-slavery friend. It is not strictly anti-slavery — but we give it 
place, because an abolitionist is the writer, and the bereaved one, 
and because it is an anti-slavery loss, that is thus simply and 
tenderly recorded. The blessing of Him, who befriends the be- 
reaved and heart-smitten, on the writer, and on the other heart 
more nearly touched than his, by this afflicting dispensation ! 

But our little " Corner" has to go again vacant of anti-slavery 
numbers, — notwithstanding our humble and earnest appeal a week 



POETRY. 211 

or two since. We thought to have touched the poet-pity of 
Pierpont, — but he has his hands full with Temperance, the Mollis 
Street distillery, and its Reverend allies, the Ecclesiastical Coun- 
cils. Good speed to his labors. They are all in our line. They 
are all in the family, and all go to the worriment and catastrophe 
of Slavery. Every arrow sent at the Distillery hits the old " Pecu- 
liar Institution" under the fifth rib, — though we should be glad, 
now and then, of a gray goose shaft at the old Dragon direct, and 
shot from our Corner by the bow of Pierpont. We spoke of 
Whittier in our appeal, — but not with expectation. The last we 
heard of him, the quondarn pride and beauty of the anti-slavery 
field, whose white plume danced amid the storm of our battle 
like the seamew — he was a candidate for Massachusetts General 
Court 1 ! 

We have explored our anti-slavery exchanges. In the Libera- 
tor we find a " Poet's Death Song," and a Farewell to the Men- 
dians, — who, thank Heaven, have at last got away from us, with 
a whole skin. The Farewell boasts of " Columbia as a protector 
of the wronged of every race." We congratulate the Mendians 
on their escape from her protection. Columbia did her utmost 
to protect them as the wolf protects the lamb. They will be glad 
enough to get clear of all sorts of white men. These white men 
are a queer race, they must think, — have a grand Bible, but an 
odd religion. They will hardly trouble themselves to introduce 
it into Mendi. They will be slow to think it any Vi-mend-menX of 
their own simple heathenism, whatever that may be. They will be 
grateful to the Amistad Committee — but as for their " education," 
we think they will lay that aside, as fast as possible along with 
those stiff stocks about their free necks. And their " auld lang 
syne" will be sung in old-fashioned African, we guess, both in 
word and strain, when once they get foot again upon their native 
sands. Merriky man's justice, we think, will stick in their crops, 
but there won't much else stick to them of his habits or manners, 
when they get ashore upon the gold coast. Garrison did not let 
the farewell escape his notice. 

Maria Child's Standard has an obituary of the frost-bitten 
posies, — alias "The Death of the Flowers" — for her anti-slavery 



212 POETRY. 

Poet's Corner. The Pennsylvania Freeman has " The Vanished 
Seasons," and "Autumn Woods" — \ery pretty poetry doubtless, 
— and we have gone on hunting, down to the People's Advocate ; 
but we had as lief almost copy their list of candidates into our 
Corner as their poetry. Alas ! the scarcity and dearth of abolition 
poetry — every where. Anti-slavery can hardly maintain a " Poet's 
Corner." O for an anti-slavery Burns, or an Ebenezer Elliot, — 
whose fiery volume lies before us, the " Corn Law Rhymer" of 
Old Sheffield. We have glanced along his pages for something 
to our purpose, but they are drawn for the meridian of " bread- 
taxed" Britain. We want something for the meridian of New 
England, and for our own time — not laments of the lacerated 
slave. The country has heard them this hundred years, in form 
more moving than poetry, and heard them unmoved. We want 
no whining wail about our blotted 'scutcheon, or our stained flag . 
Slavery does not dishonor either of them much. They were 
infamous enough without it. The stripes of the flag are well 
emblematic of a flogging people and a bloody church, for they 
are red stripes. It is starred too — betokening night, not day. 
It is night in our national firmament, and the more stars come 
out on it, the darker the cold, blue vault. And the houseless and 
shivering might as well gather shelter and a blanket from De- 
cember's starry cope, as oppressed humanity find protection, or 
chance for its life, in that " star-spangled banner !" We want 
nothing of this sort of poetry. We want a battery of thunder 
against the slaveholding North, and the " peculiar institutions" 
here. We want a broad-side for the hulk of the gory old church. 
She is as bloody as a butcher. Some poetic Paul Jones we want 
should rake her as that sea-dragon did the British ship, which 
brought him along side in the fog one night, when he let a broad- 
side into her sleeping hull, which sent her instantly to the bottom 
with all her men. But we can't find him. 

Anti-Slavery is young and rude, and as yet unfertile in bards 
who can stand fire as well as emit it. We must toil on in prose, — 
in New Hampshire, in home-made sort of prose. Farther south- 
ward, anti-slavery talks better grammar. But we have little 
schooling here. Sam. Flint strikes fire, to be sure — but not in 



BRITISH ABOLITIONISM. 213 

verses, and sparks are seen to play about the din of Ezekiel 
Rogers' shoe-hammer. But they don't write verses. We don't 
know as they ever tried. The cause will breed poets, though^^ 
by and by. Meantime we must be patient. 



BRITISH ABOLITIONISM. 

[From the Liberty Bell, December, 1841.] 

We have something to do, this side the water, with the above- 
named type of philanthropy, now that modern ingenuity has 
brought the old world and the new into juxtaposition. The ocean 
is no longer a gulf of separation, as it used to be, before the dar- 
ing genius of our times had bridged its illimitable expanse ; — 
before steam had laid down her audacious rail-road track along 
the hilly highway of nations : and where Columbus adventured 
and wandered, a century or two ago, in disregard of coast and 
stars, and trusting to the quivering needle, to hunt amid the 
wilderness of waters after a conjectured world, Cunard has set 
him up a mail route, and now carries the world's mail every fort- 
night, and talks of carrying it every week, from hemisphere to 
hemisphere. Since all these improvenunts, Britain and America 
are morally at each other's doors. It is well that, among other 
things, we understand the character of British Abolitionism. It 
has been misunderstood among us, as I think, and greatly over- 
rated. I will guess at some of the causes. Lord Mansfield had 
decided that slavery was not laio in Old England. Granville 
Sharpe, who wrote his lordship into that opinion peradventure, 
was an Englishman or a Briton. Poet Cowper of England had 
said, in his famous line, that " slaves could not breathe" there. 
" They touch our country," said he, " and their shackles fall." 
Orator Curran, whose flaming eloquence had transmuted him 
from a down-trodden Irishman to a recognized Briton, — ^^he had 
ranted gloriously of its " sacred soil," and of " the altar and the 
gods sinking together in the dust, the moment" captivity set foot 
upon that soil, from whatever quarter of the enthralled earth ; and 



214 BRITISH ABOLITIONISM. 



how the young Yankee imagination has been fired by his flaming 
burst in the school-book, about " the irresistible genius of uni- 
versal emancipation I" — We verily believed that genius lived and 
had her home " within the four seas of Britain." Wilber force 
lived,, spoke, and died in Britain — and there Clarkson labored 
against the slave-trade. Fox's humanity, and even Pitt's policy 
were anti-slavery, and both were British. A British parliament 
abolished the African slave-trade — all for love of liberty and 
mankind, of course ! — England, too, had compelled the weaker 
despotisms around her into treaties for the suppression of the in- 
fernal trade, and her naval war dogs had hunted and taken the 
pirate slaver, while Columbia's stars and stripes had winked at 
the black flag, if not courtesied to it, as they passed each other, 
" doing the business" of Christendom "in the great waters." 
And last, though not least, Britain had freed her West Indies, 
and her philanthropy had summoned the " World to meet in 
anti-slavery convention" at her capital. — O, was not Britain the 
Land of Freedom, and London Liberty's chief town ! and her 
very provinces too — her American provinces — they were a refuge 
to the fugitive slave of the republic. The north star had gone 
and stood over her Canadas, and led the wise men of the South 
there, to offer gifts to the infant Liberty. 

We went over to Britain's capital, to attend the World's anti- 
slavery meeting. One glance from the gallery of Free Masons' 
Hall, however, awoke us to the realities of her abolitionism. It 
needed but a glance. Why, anti-slavery can't live in England ! — 
not " slaves," as Cowper says, but Anti-slavery " cannot breathe 
in England I" There is not elasticity enough in her atmosphere 
to give the breast of Liberty a single respiration. Liberty dies 
there, as in an exhausted receiver, and the whole land is strewed 
with her whitened bones. Humanity lies prostrate and subject in 
Britain. I know they have law there, but it is stern as the despot- 
ism of the Lion's den. They tell of the " British Lion." There 
is a " Lion in the way," in England. He roars at every corner 
of the streets — and the people of England at times tremble at the 
shaking of his mane, as well as the threatened and disquieted 
nations of the earth abroad. Brute force is the Law and the Lib- 



BRITISH ABOLITIONISM. 015 

erty of England. The flashing of steel is the glance of her eye, 
and the exploding powder-burst the breath of her nostrils. Min 
does in England what power permits him to do. Thus far shall 
thou go, it says to his footstep, and no farther, and here shall the 
proud waves of thy humanity be stayed. The Briton ramps in 
his liberty ; but his vehemency is as the watch dog's of his own 
guarded home. He falls to the ground, when he gets the length 
of his subject chain. All are vassals in England. The colossal 
Brougham is but a vassal. He is but a giant subject. Welling- 
ton is a subject. He conquered Bonaparte, but he has to do 
homage at the foot of a British girl. He wears her collar on his 
ducal neck. And the mighty O'Connell, whose genius measures 
the earth, and whose voice " agitates" it, — he is a subject of that 
same British damsel. He owes her allegiance and fealty. Her 
will is his law, and he does public homage in the face of Britain . 
and the world, to her Royal baby, as his fellow-subject, the nurse, 
dismounts the little Royal Highness from its poney-phaeton in 
St. James's Park. Victoria's brass collar glitters on the neck of 
O'Connell. And George Thompson, too, the philanthropist as 
well as the orator, the anti-slavery champion of the old world — 
the advocate of both the Indies — whose " cloud-cleaving" genius 
mounts to the sun, and gazes it in the face — even he has to come 
down again, and own allegiance to his Queen. The cable of 
subjugation, fixed about his imperial talon, anchors him to the 
monarchy of England, and he lights down from his career among 
the storms, a panting, breathless, baffled British subject. And 
the poor little Q,ueen herself is a slave among the rest, and the 
most of a slave of them all. She wears a crown on her head, 
and a sceptre in her small hand, (if her hand be small,) a crown 
that dazzles and a sceptre that scares more people than any other, 
perhaps, of the earth's surface, — yet she is involved inextricably 
in the iron entanglement of subjection, with all her subjects. 
She is the key-stone of the subject arch, and as free to move, 
and no freer, than the key of one of the arches of her old Lon- 
don bridge. Nothing can disenthrall her but an earthquake revo- 
lution, that should shake the civilized world — and that earth- 
<iuake is brewing. God speed the moral chartism of Britain to 



21G BRITISH ABOLITIONISM. 



avert it — or rather American abolitionism diffused beyond the 
waters, which may, or may not, reach them in time. 

Britain can aid us but little in the overthrow of slavery — Ire- 
land can more. But the waves of moral revolution must start 
from an agitation here. They cannot move it there. We have 
freedom here, or it is at least possible to individuals — when we 
get it, we can impart it. We are in moral insurrection, and, 
once at liberty, we dispense freedom to the slave — or rather, the 
bursting of our own voluntary shackles, here under New Eng- 
land's sky, will unrivet the fetters that gall the limbs and souls 
of the plantations, and slavery will disappear from the land. The 
disenthrallment would not probably stop in this country, or any 
where short of the deliverance of mankind. 

British subjection is not to State only — she has to bear also 
the Church. Her monarchy " kills the body," but she has a 
hierarchy that " kills both soul and body in hell." That is to 
say, it claims power so to kill, and the mass of the subject people 
acknowledge the claim ; a load on the backs of the wretched 
subjects enough to sink even the navy they have to carry, among 
their other burdens. Oh, the castles and palaces, the abbeys, ca- 
thedrals, minsters, and churches, reared by Royalty, Nobility, and 
Popery (Catholic and Protestant) over that beautiful Island, built 
by the half-requited labor of a starved and houseless people ! 
Britain's Religion, instead of " not having where to lay its head," 
has turned the People out of house and home, and itself dwells 
in palaces. It is richer than Dives, and fares more sumptuously 
every day. The abolitionism of Britain is as fat as its Religion. 

A word more of that " World's Convention," for " Liberty 
Bell" rings, and we have but a moment of time. We passed by 
its threshold, and beheld Lucretia Mott repulsed from its doors. 
The credentials of the American Anti-Slavery Society, its 
broad seal palpable as the sun in the firmament, that should have 
given the bearer credit and welcome, the anti-slavery world over, 
lay there soiled and dishonored in the sooty dust of London 
streets, its ample sheet torn and trampled under foot by the thick- 
sooled heel of " British Usage." At the opening meeting, pre- 
liminary to the sittings of Conference, presided that princely 



BRITISH ABOLITIONISM. ojy 

incident to her Royal Majesty, His Royal Highness, Prince Al- 
bert. On the platform, if I mistake not, sat O'Connell, called 
for by the people, but unpermitted to speak by the anti-slavery 
Committee. At all events, at the winding-up meeting, Georgi; 
Thompson and William Lloyd Garrison both sat mute upon 
that platform, (a phenomenon in an anti-slavery meeting,) n-.t 
allowed to speak by the committee of arrangements, wh le the 
advocacy of the World's anti-slavery cause was left to the Royal 
Sussex, and to Messrs. Lushington of London and Birney ol" 
Kentucky. His Royal Highness, the Duke of Sussex, presided at 
the meeting, and one of the London committee humbly " thanked 
His Royal Highness for his condescension ! ! " — Her Grace, the 
Duchess of Sutherland supported His Royal Highness in the chair, 
though LucRETiA MoTT was not allowed a seat in the anti-slavery 
conference, because she was a woman. Is Her Grace more than 
a woman ! This is a sample of British abolitionism. Another 
sign of it, — George Thompson sat almost a mute spectator dur- 
ing the whole Conference. Is it an anti-slavery atmosphere, 
where George Thompson droops and desponds ! 

A word of the vaunted Emancipation Act, and but a word, for 
"Liberty Bell" tolls. (It is Slavery's knell.) That boasted 
Emancipation Act, which gives Britannia the philanthropic mis- 
tress-ship of the world, as her navy claims it of the ocean, — what 
is it ? Why, it was and is nothing but a base, pro-slavery act of 
Parliament ! It was a legislative mancEuvre to baffle the human- 
ity of the subject people of Britain. George Thompson had 
exasperated them at the chattel slavery of the West Indies. They 
had no color-phobia in their imaginations, and it was easy to 
kindle their common humanity to a flame of indignation. Par- 
liament saw the necessity of giving it vent somewhere else than 
on itself It let it off through the channel of Apprenticeship, a 
cold-blooded device, which protracted slavery and deferred the 
hope of heart-sick philanthropy, for six long years — in wicked 
expectation, doubtless, that meantime the atrocities of the appren- 
ticeship might reconcile the people and the slave to the re-estab- 
lishment of slavery, — or that something might turn up to give 
the dragon system a chance of restoration. The mass of the 
19 



218 BRITISH ABOLITIONISM. 

subject petitioners were deluded by the trick, and compromised 
with Parliament ; and then to punish the people for their temerity 
in petitioning, Parliament imposed on them the most atrocious 
tax ever inflicted by greedy tyranny on the back of labor. Twen- 
ty million pounds sterling — a hundred millions of dollars, they 
imposed on emaciated, " bread-taxed," British Labor, wringing 
the last morsel from the insufficiency of a fainting people, to 
compensate the slaveholder for his disquietude under the agitation. 
This is the vaunted Emancipation Act. It is as humane an act 
as Parliament or Congress ever did, or could enact. They have 
" no soul," or heart, and can manifest none. But such was the 
enormity of this piece of " British abolitionism," that some of 
the slaveholding islands preferred immediate emancipation, and 
adopted it on the spot, and left the Emancipation Act standing 
alone in the gaze of the world, with nothing in their limits to 
<iperate upon ; and in 1840, when the act was consummated, the 
slaves of Bermuda and Antigua had been free six years in spite 
of it. And the slaveholders of the other islands could not brook 
the " Emancipation Act" its whole time. They were sick of its 
atrocities, or embarrassed by its foolish impolicy, and they pro- 
claimed Liberty, in the teeth of it, Aug. 1838, and left it for two 
years " alone in its glory." This is the whole of the parliament- 
ary philanthropy of Britain. An attempt to defer Liberty for six 
dreary years, and a plundering of the people, who asked for it, 
of a hundred millions of dollars, as a present to the slavehold- 
ers. Hail, Britannia! 

Of course, I need make no exceptions here in behalf of the 
glorious individuals in Britain and Ireland, whose spirits do not 
hvcok this subjection, and who will work themselves free of it. 
They are beginning to feel the chains they were born and bred to, 
though they press upon them with the unseen weight of the air 
they breathe. Anti-slavery chemistry is discovering that there is 
burden, (and not support, as in the air,) in the subject atmos- 
phere of monarchy and hierarchy, and they will, by and by, refuse 
to inhale it. Truth will purify it, till they can respire freely in 
it, and Liberty Bell shall agitate it, with its wild music, and 
" proclaim throughout all the land — to all the Inhabitants there- 



ANTI-SLAVERY. 219 



of," that inestimable boon, that " one thing needful" to universal 
humanity — that sine qua non of tolerable human existence — 
Liberty ; with which life is a blessing, and without which it is 
a curse. 



ANTI-SLAVERY. 



[From the Herald of Freedom of April 8, 1842.] 

Anti-Slavery is a more serious matter than a great many took 
it to be, who nominally enlisted in it, at the outset. It does not 
consist in thinking slaveholding is a sin, or as the self-worshipping 
clergy say, with dismal look, and mouth distorted with sacerdotal 
pucker, ^wrong. Nor in thinking it would be safe, or profitable, 
or expedient, to have it stopped at once. Nor in shuddering at 
thought of a cart whip and paddle. Nor in thinking the Right 
of Petition a constitutional one. Nor in the opinion that Madi- 
son Washington had as good a right to rise on the deck of the 
Creole, as George Washington had to rise against a three-penny 
encroachment of that old, fighting Monarchy, the other side the 
Atlantic. All these matters, which the slave-master holds to, in 
the abstract, as he calls it — (that is, as never to be practised on) 
do not constitute anti-slavery, and will never abolish slavery, to 
dooms-day. Anti-Slavery holds to the perfect equality of the 
human family, in the matter of rights — to the inalienability of 
that equality. And since this is denied, violated and trampled 
on, — anti-slavery will morally annoy all those who in any way 
have been guilty of the violation, until they not only repent and 
reform, but help, to their utmost, in completing the reformation 
of the country. Anti-Slavery practises all that is necessary to 
the speediest abolition of slavery. Any thing short of this, is 
not anti-slavery. Any thing that refuses or neglects to practise 
this, is pro-slavery. It helps keep up the slave system. Any 
thing short of this, will oppose genuine anti-slavery. And the 
higher its anti-slavery pretensions, the more impatient and stren- 
uous will be its hostility. 



220 ANTI-SLAVERY. 



Anti-Slavery demands the abolition of slavery on the ground 
that slaves are human, and therefore must not be enslaved; — that 
masters are human, (or vi'ould be if they did not banish all their 
humanity,) and so cannot be masters. It goes to work upon the 
pro-slavery community, to infuse these principles into it. It goes 
to work too in earnest. It strips to the work. It does not go to 
it with a cloak on — but disencumbered of coat even, and with 
arms bared to the elbow, and collar opened to the breeze. And 
as it strikes, you can hear its loud expirations, like the wood- 
chopper's at the trunk of the Royal Oak. The noise of its agency 
is heard early and lute, disquieting the pro-slavery tranquility of 
the land. Nothing is anti-slavery, that does not thus earnestly 
and annoyingly work. True anti-slavery is disquieting. Nothing 
is disquieting but moral annoyance. Physical aggression is at 
once met by physical resistance, and overpowered and quelled. 
Political effort produces no permanent disquietude in community. 
Public disquietude is anti-slavery success. The more it disturbs 
and agitates a wicked pro-slavery quiet, the sooner the slave has 
his liberty. This is most promoted, we think, by touching the 
church, which is the apple of community's eye. The church is its 
favorite institution, and touching it is inflicting a mortal wound. 
It is like hitting the whale in his vital part. It is the lancing, 
that makes slavery spout blood. It breeds that commotion in 
society, which makes it surge and foam, as the sea does round 
tiie whale in his death-throes, when he makes it boil like a pot. 

What is the moral effect of political effort ? Is it agitation, or 
quiescence? The latter, surely. It has no tendency to stir the 
great moral deep. It tends to apathy and torpidity It generates 
a superficial and fictitious animation, like the stimulus of alcohol, 
but torpor and lethargy follow, and become the permanent con- 
dition of community. It is this that the clergy desire, and there- 
fore if any anti-slavery agitation must be had, they decidedly 
prefer a political to a moral one. A moral agitation they will not 
countenance or permit. And they are shrewd in this, for they 
could not control it, or long survive it. They deprecate moral 
agitation beyond all other things. They rather have a civil war. 
They would prefer a dozen foreign wars, to one such agitation as 



CHURCH AND STATE. 221 

is now going on for the slave, at the movement of old-organized 
abolitionism. And they could well afford to. Foreign wars make 
work for the clergy, and. are without danger to them. Their 
prayers are in demand in the army, or at least for the army, and 
they are copiously furnished, if they happen to like the war. A 
civil war would be personally hazardous. But war-pestilence, 
(among the laity) famine, (not extending to the parsonage) earth- 
quakes, inundation — any thing, rather than the dreadful moral 
agitation now shaking the land, and putting in mortal jeopardy the 
very divinity of their hoary order. If you wish to annoy slavery 
out of the community, touch the pro-slavery church with the 
Ithuriel spear. Bore out her Polyphemian eye, with the red-hot 
iron of Truth. You may touch any of her institutions but the 
church, and she will take it insensibly. 

And yet the professed abolition cries out — Beware how you 
disrespect the Church and the Ministers. Anti-Slavery must not 
lose its reverence for them — come of the slave what may. Abol- 
ish slavery if you can, but reverence the Clergy, and the Pulpit, 
and the Steeple, whether or no. Our conscience and judgment 
answer NO. " God speed the right," 



CHURCH AND STATE. 



[From the Herald of Freedom of July 15, 1842.] 

It was the curse and ruin of the Church, when she consented 
to the friendship and protection of the armed State. Christianity 
left her at that moment, and has never since darkened her doors, 
except to bear testimony against her. Our modern Church is a 
mere creature of the State. She is as much a State institution, 
as Banks, Insurance companies. Turnpike Corporations, or Cot- 
ton Factories. And the State is her preserver, as well as creator. 
This is what we have been all along saying, while the impudent 
harlot has denied it, unblushingly, as harlots always deny, I sup- 
pose. She has claimed to be the bride of Christ — while all along 
she has been the mistress of the military State. She is, like ali 
19* 



222 CHURCH AND STATE. 

other harlots, enamored of the cockade and the scarlet coat of* 
the soldier ; yet when put to the profession, she disfigures her 
face, and claims to be " the bride, the lamb's wife." Mark be- 
low, in the legislative act protecting her, the reliance she puts on 
God, — mark her faith. A few conscientious individuals have 
tried to speak for the slave, a few times, in her heathenish syna- 
gogues, and it has filled all her borders with mortal alarm. It 
scares her more than the Roman Eagles did the old High Priest- 
hood at Jerusalem, — or rather than Christ's speaking, which they 
feared would bring the Romans upon them, to take away both 
their place and their nation. Frightened out of her heathenish 
wits, she runs for protection to the State House. She fled in this 
town to Justice Badger in the first place, and he tried to relieve 
her by imposing a fine, without any law. For when the church 
prosecutes, she must prevail, law or no law. The Church did not 
dare risk, however, a continuance of prosecutions Avithout lawj 
lest, by and by, she might get hold of a magistrate who would ask 
her for her law. She thought she would make sure, and have a 
law made that she could produce, if called for. Mr. Tuck, (not 
Friar Tuck, but Squire Tuck — the Tucks, by the way, have been 
famous as champions of the Church, ever since the days of the 
self-denying clerk of Copmanhurst, celebrated in Ivanhoe,) — Mr. 
Tuck of Exeter, a lawyer, introduced the protective bill, and an- 
other evatigelical member of the bar, Squire Wells of Lancaster, 
advocated it. And General Court passed it. And now, if a 
prosecution should be commenced, they have got a statute to base 
it upon, whose only defect is, it is flagrantly unconstitutional. 
But that is no consequence. The constitutionality won't be 
looked up. Foster is a non-resistant. 

Here follows the act. It will do to go, by and by, among the 
blue laws of liberal old Connecticut, and the red laws of en- 
lightened old Massachusetts, under which they strung up women 
by the neck, on Gallows Hill, in the charita1)le and brotherly town 
of Salem — for the unscriptural vocation of witchcraft. They 
hung them under " Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" — adopt- 
ed into the law book. 



CHURCH AND STATE. 223 

Dieturbing Religious Meetings. 

STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 

In the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and forty-two. 

An Act relating to the Disturbance of Religious Meetings and 
Assemblies. 

Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Represent- 
atives, in General Court convened. That if any individual shall 
disturb any religious meeting by speaking in the same so as to 
interrupt or prevent the stated and orderly proceedings and ex- 
ercises of such meeting, and said person shall not desist from 
causing such disturbance and interruption of such proceedings 
and exercises when thereto requested, it shall and may be lawful 
for any magistrate or police officer or any other individual of such 
meeting to remove said person from the same ; and such magis- 
trate, police officer or other individual may also remove any in- 
dividual or individuals causing disturbance in a similar manner 
while the people are assembling at, or leaving, their place of 
worship. 

Sec. 2. And br it further enacted, Th t any individual offending 
as aforesaid, or aiding and abetting therein, shall be liable to be 
prosecuted therefor before any Justice of the Peace for the Coun- 
ty in which the offence shall have been ccm.mitted, and on convic- 
tion thereof shall be fined in a sum not less than one, nor more 
than ten dollars, and may be required to recognize with sufficient 
sureties in a sum not less than fifty nor more than one hundred 
dollars, for his appearance at the Court of Common Pleas for the 
County in which such offence shall have been committed, at the 
term thereof next thereafter to be holden, to answer to such mat- 
ters as may then and there be objected against him in behalf of 
the State, and for his being, in the mean time, of good behavior : 
and if at such term it shall be made to appear to such Court that 
such recogizance has been forfeited by a repetition of such of- 
fence, such Court may order that such offender further recognize 
in a sum not exceeding two hundred dollars for his appearance at 
said Court to answer as aforesaid at the next succeeding term 
thereof, and for his being in the mean time of good behavior ; 



224 CHURCH AND STATE. 

and such recognizance may be required by such Court from term 
to term so often as such forfeiture shall be incurred. 
Approved, June 23, 1842. 

HENRY HUBBARD, Governor. 

The Congregational Journal is out in ecstacies with a copy of 
this church law, and the speeches of the two lawyers, who spoke 
in favor of its passage. And it accompanies them with a long 
and most inflammatory and Jesuitical comment, which the Bap- 
tist Register copies with stupid alacrity. They forgot even their 
water hostilities — their aquatic squabbles, in their common fear 
of Liberty of Speech. Friend Wood's article is full of mobocrat- 
ic malignity and bloody instigation. There is not a particle in it 
of the fairness of a common, political-partisan appeal on the eve 
of an election. The Log-Cabin speeches in the time of the great 
political mania of 1840, were candor and charity compared to 
it — as a politician always is, compared to a priest. I am glad, 
however, that they are all out with their church statute, and their 
inflammatory comments. The more they say, the quicker they 
will be found out. Abolitionists can describe them, but they 
alone can show themselves, and prove the description true. I 
am glad the Church has fled to the State House for protection, 
and laid hold on tlie horns of the State altar. I am glad she has 
been driven to confess that her only guarantee is in the Constitu- 
tion, and not in the Gospel, as she has hypocritically professed, 
and made the people believe. The people respect their Consti- 
tution, but they do not believe it is the Gospel. They have great 
respect and reliance on the State House ; but it is in matters of 
this world. They look there for protection to the body and to 
property — but not for salvation. They don't regard it as the 
fountain of the Church of Christ, or the proper fortress for the 
Church to run to, for protection. They don't regard faith in the 
General Court as a saving faith, and will have little confidence 
in a worship or a religion, that has to acknowledge it for a pro- 
tector and preserver, 

I charge upon meeting-house worship that it is a creature of 
the State, and not of Christ — that it relies for protection and 



CHURCH AND STATE. 305 

support on the strong arm of the law, and not on God. They 
have denied it. Now they have proved and more than confessed 
it. A humble individual or two has attempted to speak in their 
meetings — not rudely — not indecently — not triflingly. Any thing 
like this they could have borne, but seriously, solemnly and truly, 
and this they could not bear. They have fled to the State for 
armed protection, and they have got it, and are madly proclaim- 
ing it. Those religious editors are clamoring about their " con- 
stitutional rights," and " rights of property," " rights guaranteed 
by their fathers," and all that— with all the pugnacity and mar- 
tial ferocity of the parties to the Rhode Island war. I am most 
heartily rejoiced to see them at it, seeing it is in their religion. 
I am glad they have procured their penal statute. It shows their 
Christianity. It will be broken, of course. God will be obeyed 
rather than they. Men will be found to speak in their syna- 
gogues, besides Stephen Foster, who, but for this fifleen-gallon 
law, never might have thought of it. And women too — the wor- 
shippers will drag them out — some of them they will maim and 
cripple — others they will perhaps kill — others they will prosecute 
and imprison in the spirit of Christ, and for the protection of 
His church. He had founded His church on the Rock, he said. 
The Catholics say that Rock is St. Peter. Our New Hampshire 
Protestants say it is — St. General Court. Let the prosecutions 
be multiplied. The Church will show her cloven foot by it. 

It is curious to see how New Organization nestles, on this 
question, by the side of the pro-slavery Church and State. Our 
little aqueous friend Worth, who used to be one of the board of 
managers of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society — and would 
have managed it to this day, if there had not been a spirit of liberty 
in the movement that threw off the clerical nightmares — is hand 
in hand with the old Observer. He is copying from the Congre- 
gational Journal. The eternal question of dijj or sprinkle seems 
forgotten, and baptizo quotes infant baptism by the whole col- 
umn. Herod and Pilate are cheek by jowl in hatred and fear 
of free speech. And well may they fear and hate it. It is a 
hand-writing on the walls of their synagogues. 

I know the critical nature, apparently, of the controversy we 



226 CHURCH AND STATE. 

are in. The Journal and Register imagine we have at last taken 
a position on which they may venture out to meet us, and they 
are quitting their entrenchments. I know we join issue on one 
of the extreme points of our cause, and that for the moment the 
enemy will seem to have the argument against us. J3ut I know 
we are right, and it will turn out so in the proof. 

The Right of Speech is the anti-slavery Palladium. It is its 
spear and shield. It is the Herculean club of Liberty. Violate 
it, infringe it, curtail it, restrict it, regulate it, and it dies, and 
liberty and reform with it. I know it might be abused, and 
probably would be, if it were free. But its abuses are as the 
small dust of the balance, compared with the infinite evil of the 
denial of the right. The abuses are not worth naming, and free- 
men never would name them. They are magnified to mountains 
by the fears of tyrants. What would Daniel Noyes and Eben- 
ezer Cummings care for a half-hour's interruption of their hire- 
ling performance by Stephen Foster, if they were not conscious 
of being guilty jugglers, engaged in a wicked profession that 
they could not carry on, if the people had their senses. They 
would be glad to have Foster, and such as he, speak, if they were 
in an honest business. He would help them, instead of inter- 
rupting them. Such a man as Daniel I. Robinson, the Metho- 
dist preacher, would not be interrupted. He is an honest man, 
and understands the true character (to great extent) of a christian 
minister, and understands christian liberty, and values it. Fos- 
ter's speaking in Jiis meetings can't endanger him. If he speaks 
error there, Robinson is free to meet it ; and if it turns out not 
to be error, he wants to know it, and promulgate it himself. But 
a Priest is afraid of the truth, for he knows truth would unfrock 
him. He knows truth is fatal to a human priesthood. 

It is a severe question — but I am glad it is up. It has got to 
be met for humanity, and the quicker the better. The right set- 
tlement of it will go mightily for the abolition of slavery. 



COBBETT'S AMERICAN GARDENER. 227 

COBBETT'S AMERICAN GARDENER. 
[From the Herald of Freedom of July 15, 1842.] 

This book, which is one among a thousand, and one of the 
few worth buying, or having, or that are not worse than nothing, 
among the inundation of books with which the press is flooding 
the world, I ought to have noticed before. Luther Hamilton of 
this place, bookseller, has recently published a stereotyped edition 
of it. He sent me in a copy, for which I sincerely thank him — 
as well as in behalf of the community for giving them an edition 
of this rare and valuable work. 

John Randolph said William Cobbett was the first genius liv- 
ing. He told the truth, though he was a slaveholder — and his 
testimony is the more valuable because he hated Cobbett. He 
hated him because he was a friend of humanity and human lib- 
erty, and Randolph himself an aristocrat and a tyrant. Cobbett 
had a bad reputation, for the reason, I have no doubt, that he 
deserved a good one. The clergy hated him, for his indepen- 
dence, and his defiance of the aristocracy, of whom the clergy 
are always the hangers on and sycophants, where they have not 
the power of controlling them. When they can rule them, they 
(\o — as they do every body in their power ; and when they cannot 
domineer over them, by force of their jugglery, they fawn on 
them, and help them trample down the people. Cobbett was a 
formidable antagonist to the tyrant classes, and hence they hated 
him, and have given him a bad name, which is an honor to any 
man in a priest-ridden world. 

This work on gardening is a modest, unpretending book, like 
all sterling productions. It is written in a style as beautiful as 
the subject, and as natural as a garden ought to be. It is worth 
buying for the style of it, aside from the information it contains. 
Every body can understand it at a glance, without a dictionary. 
And the book that can't be, never ought to be read. These books 
that abound in dictionary words, are learned nonsense and im- 
position. Cobbett's Gardener is full of short, every day words, 
which the people can understand, as readily as they can tell an 



COBBETT'S AMERICAN GARDENER. 



< nion stalk, or a cabbage plant. It is like Pierpont's poetry in 
that — abounding in monosyllabled words. You will find whole 
lines of them uninterrupted, every one as full of meaning, as it 
can hold — the beautiful, strong, old Saxon — the talk-words — 
words for use, and not for show. Every young man and woman, 
who has been injured in their talk and writing by going to school, 
ought to buy Cobbett's Gardener, or some other of his works. 
A young collegian should read it twice a day, till he gets well 
of his pedantry. Cobbett will cure him if any body can. 

" Do you teach your sons Latin, Mr. Cobbett?" asked a gen- 
tleman. " No," said the common-sense sage — " but I learn them 
to shave with cold water ! " A bit of learning worth more to a 
man with a beard, than all the Latin the Monkery ever preserved 
from the ruins of Rome. 

You can understand the " Gardener" with once reading, just 
as readily as you could the talk of a sensible gardener himself — 
and those who have followed it, say it turns out to be true — con- 
trary to the fact of most agricultural books, which are mere spec- 
ulations and theorizing, which no body can afford to practise. 
The subject of this book is a beautiful one to read of and talk 
of, if you have not any ground to work it out on. Gardening — 
nothing is more interesting or profiting. We associate Paradise 
always with the idea of it. The great Lord Bacon (by the way 
not half the man that Cobbett was) said " Gardening was the 
purest of human pleasures." One of his famous " Essays" was 
" Of Gardening," if I remember the title. But he wrote of a 
garden for kings and princes, — Cobbett's gardens are for men — 
for families, — and that speaks the difference between the two 
authors. Bacon was a worshipper and slave of kings, — Cobbett 
a friend of man. The learned world call the one, " The great 
Sir Francis Bacon," and the other Cobbett, or Bill Cobbett. 

A glorious garden, whether small or large, is a sort of Eden, 
and it is a fine idea, whether it was a literal fact, or an allegory 
merely, to show God's kindness to the man and woman He had 
made, that He put them, at their beginning, into a garden, " to 
dress it and to keep it." We fancy Eden was every thing a 
garden could be ; but I dare say it would not have hurt Adam and 



COBBETT'S AMERICAN GARDENER. 0Q9 

Eve to have put into their hands a copy of Cohbctt, written in the 
primeval language of humanity, which, whatever it was, they 
spoke, no doubt, in the same style Cobbett writes. They had 
not been to College — Adam to a University, nor Eve to a Board- 
ing School. 

I cannot help saying here, what a pity it is that our cities and 
large towns are crowded together, so that they cannot have gar- 
dens. What a glorious sight a city would be, interspersed with 
them, — and how refreshing and healthful to live in it, compared 
with them now, crowded with stones and bricks, like an old, over- 
stocked grave yard. A good, large garden, where every family 
could raise all their vegetables, and have them fresh and sweet, 
and have the exercise of carrying the garden on, as well as the 
recreation and health and enjoyment of straying among its alleys. 
What a luxury and a blessing ! A garden and a lawn, — a city 
could enjoy them both, as well as the country, but for a miserable 
avarice, which holds the land so high nobody can buy it, except 
for the site of their hateful-looking piles of building. Thus self- 
ishness always cheats itself 

Newburyport has a good many gardens ; but if the town should 
jlourish, as they call it — commerce would pile up a great brick 
store in every one of them, as Boston has. And our little city 
of Concord is trying to crowd out all the gardens, and fill up with 
edifices — because a garden is not profitable ! They can afford a 
meeting-house in almost every street ; but a garden, with its re- 
freshing opening, and its indescribable beauty, can't be afforded ! 
One good garden of a quarter of an acre, or a quarter of that, is 
in my opinion worth more to a village than a dozen meeting- 
houses ! It furnishes some food, as well as gratification, — the 
meeting-house nothing but spiritual starvation — and it don't cost 
so much to maintain the gardener neither. 

Buy " Cobbett's American Gardener," every body that has got 
the money. 

20 



230 AT HOME AGAIN. 



AT HOME AGAIN. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 2, 1842.] 

" Home is home, " &.C., even returning from anti-slavery so- 
journings abroad. Anti-Slavery, which makes every where home 
to the abolitionist — for it affords all the love, and all the affection- 
ate kindnesses and congeniality of feeling, which constitute the 
charm of literal home. Anti-Slavery makes every where more 
than home, for it is disinterested and free, while home, in the old 
English sense of it, is neither, — and nothing better than a den of 
selfishness and discontent. I mean the ordinary human homes, 
where animal relationship is the chief tie that binds the unhappy 
inmates together. Anti-Slavery delivers home from the curse of 
selfishness. Every home might be so delivered. Every body 
might have a home, and every body be at home, every where. 
And miserable, priest-ridden selfishness must not always keep 
mankind at enmity with each other, as it now does. They are 
brethren. They must trust each other, and love each other — and 
they may live happily and gloriously on the earth. It may be 
done — it will be — or there is no God, and ought to be no man. 
" It's coming yet — for a' that." 

My last letter from abroad was dated at Lynn — glorious Lynn, 
with her High Rock and her sea ; — her silvery Beaches and her 
Nahants ; — her noble people — fee, but for their priests — and 
freer from these, than any people of their number. I went a 
ride, Tuesday afternoon, to Swamscot, one of her villages, and 
the Ocean House. Our friend G. Estis — the subject of Rever- 
end brother Sanborn's impudent treatment detailed in the Herald 
of to-day — carried three anti-slavery friends of us, in her father's 
carriage through Swamscot, the city of the fishermen, to the 
neighborhood of the Ocean House, a famous tavern retreat from 
the city, about two and a half miles out of town. G. Estis may 
be churched, for keeping company with wife, Hannah Buffum and 
me, " in the manner she did," as solemn parson Sanborn has it — 
in that ride. For it was just such a " manner " as she rode with 
Beach, and walked with colored Douglass. 



SWAMSCOT. 231 



Swamscot is all fishermen. Their business is all on the deep 
Their village is ranged along the ocean margin, where their 
brave little fleets lay drawn up, and which are out at day-break on 
the mighty blue — where you may see them brooding at anchor — 
still and intent at their profound trade, as so many flies on the 
back of a wincing horse, and for whose wincings they care as 
little as the Swamscot Fishers heed the restless heavings of the 
sea around their barks. Every thing about savors of fish. Nets 
hang out on every enclosure. " Flakes," for curing the fish are 
attached to almost every dwelling. Every body has a boat — and 
you'll see a huge pair of sea boots laying before almost every 
door. The air too savors strongly of the common finny voca- 
tion. Beautiful little Beaches slope out from the dwellings into 
the Bay, all along the village — where the fishing boats lay keeled 
up, at low water, with their useless anchors hooked deep into the 
sand. A stranded bark is a sad sight — especially if it is above 
high water mark, where the next tide can't relieve it and set it 
afloat again. The Swamscot boats though, all look cheery, and 
as if sure of the next sea-flow. The people are said to be the 
freest in the region — owing perhaps to their bold and adventu- 
rous life. The Priests can't ride them out into the deep, as they 
can the shore folks. I understood Foster went among them, and 
spoke several times, and that they received him with generous 
cordiality, and heard him like freemen. It an't the first time 
Truth has found a warm welcome among fshermen. 

Wednesday we took a ride to Marblehead. It is worth going 
a hundred miles, to a New England countryman, to see Marble- 
head. It looks like foreign land. The rocky foundations, the 
steep, narrow, winding streets — the tall, old-fashioned houses, 
make it look like some of the small antique places I saw in Eng- 
land and Scotland. " Marblehead's a rocky place." There's 
no mistake about that. It seems all a ledge of rocks, and the 
houses and streets are where openings happen between. There 
is no road through the town. You have to come out as you go 
in. Marblehead is the end of the world in that direction — un- 
less you take ship. And there are plenty of keels in their beau- 
tiful inland harbor. It looks like a pond among the New Hamp- 



232 BELL-RINGING. 



shire hills. A high ridge of rocky upland rises between it and 
the main ocean, and the fleet of large fishermen that lay in there 
at anchor, looked as snug and safe as if they were in a mill pond. 
Marblehead is Svvamscot on a larger scale. Her fishers go off 
into the great ocean, and are gone weeks or months, on the Grand 
Banks. There was an alarm among them, the day I was there, 
about one bark, that had not been spoken for an unusual time. 
They are often lost at sea. The place is full of widows, I was 
told, from losses at sea, and in the last war, to which many brave 
but foolish men went from Marblehead. I was astonished to hear 
the people were peculiarly pro-slavery. They are mostly demo 
crats, and are afraid probably of 3d Partyism. They must be 
shown that that is not abolitionism. We found but one abolition 
family there, Thomas Wooldridge's, a " come-outer " Quaker. 
Garrison or Foster must go among them, and tell the bold " fish- 
ermen of Marblehead" what anti-slavery means, and they will 
embrace it. They will be abolitionists fast enough, when they 
learn that anti-slavery is humanity, and not politics or sectarian- 
ism. 

The printer warns me there is no room to continue. I may 
ramble a little further another week. 



BELL-RINGING. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 30, 1842.] 

" Serjuoj^ in stones, and books in running brooks," &c., 
weather-cocks in straws — everi/ thing shows how the whole con- 
cern is going on. Only notice every thing, and you will see it. 
I have been struck, within the last four and twenty hours, with 
this ding-dong-belling, going on in the village. It means and 
shows a good deal. The bell is the tongue of the times. It not 
only tells that time is gone, and how much of it — but it tells the 
times, and how thei/ go. "One man in his time," says Shake', 
" plays many parts." I thought this morning it was true of some 
bells. There is a poor dinging slave hung up in the belfry of 



BELL-RINGING. 233 



parson Cummings' house of Rimmon in this village. (I speak as 
I do, because I want to bring familiarity and irreverence over the 
pretensions of such folks.) It has to play many parts. It plays 
one good part — when the hammer of the town clock strikes it. 
The tower, where it hangs, does one good service — showing the 
face of that clock to the villagers, and giving them the time o' 
day. All else, that I now think of, is mischievous. The solemn, 
doleful, monkish knells, wailed out on the people's ear, to tell 
them when parson Cummings is to commence his magnificent 
performances, to keep his Baptists from straying into the paths of 
truth and righteousness. Not but what the Baptists are as good 
as any of the solemn sects. They have been the best of any, in 
their humble day, when they were persecuted. That is the only 
time any of the sects are ever good for any thing, and it is then 
comparatively only. That dismal, gc-tc-meetin' summons too — 
tliat priestly, canting tone, ung out to call the bewildered multi- 
tude to hear Knapp play upon their fears. It sounds priestly 
and ghostly. Those who obey it follow a Jack-a-lantern. God 
bids them not follow such leads. They trifle v/ith all the gui- 
dance He has kindly furnished them, who muster at such sum- 
monses. A dismal, funeral sound — as from the tombs. The 
human ear never ought to hear such sounds, any more than human 
eyes ought to be blasted with the sight of ghosts and apparitions. 
It is not right, and every body, in their right mind, knov.'s it ! 
If you want to use a bell for honest purposes — ring it out, hon- 
estly, as you do when there is a fire. (That is another good use 
for the Baptist bell, I had forgotten.) Don't let it whine out, like 
a canting divine. It only dismalizes the people. They ought 
not to be dismalized. They can't repent truly, when they are. 
They are only scared. There is no saving repentance in fright, 
or in dismality. 

This Baptist bell, — I heard it ringing another of its clerical 
cries this morning, summoning the solemn converts of Sunday 
to the sister Court House. A more rapid and secular ding-dong, 
this call to court, — as well as more honest. There is no monkery 
in it. It is a devilish sound, to be sure, — full of quarrel and liti- 
gation, but it does not profess to be a sound from Heaven. How 
20* 



234 GREAT MEETING-HOUSE ERUPTION. 

full of hurry it is ! It calls to ruin — headlong ruin. Not the 
deep and everlasting destruction of the cathedral-going call, but 
ruin of estate and of temper, — which they in vain seek to re- 
trieve, by afterwards running to the meeting-house. The remedy 
is worse than the disease. When will mankind hearken to God, 
rather than to a human Priesthood and its allies ! The same bell 
can call to meetin' and to court, as handily as the same parson 
can perform at a Revival, and at opening the squabble of a Court 
Session. The tongue of the Reverend Bell and of the Reverend 
Divine are alike versatile. 

Another benefit I had forgotten in that belfry and steeple — a 
weather-cock on it tells the way of the wind. A 7ninister's 
steeple is the very place for a weccther-cock. There is one up in 
his pulpit, and the vane on the steeple rod is not truer to the cur- 
rent. You can tell the way of the popular current to a certainty, 
by the lieading of the pulpit weather-cock. 

I like the cow bell on the common, and the sheep bell on the 
hill — and the dinner bell — and the rail road bell. That is a cap- 
ital sound telling the starting of the mighty cars — and the bell on 
the Steam Boat prow, ringing for a trip over the great Atlantic. 
I don't love the Factory Bell, or the State's Prison Bell, or the 
Court Bell, or the Sectarian meetin' bell. They all strike heavily 
and dismally on the heart of humanity. 



GREAT MEETING-HOUSE ERUPTION. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Oct. U, 1842.] 

This town has been for the last few weeks — particularly the 
last week and Sunday, — the scene of another volcano of fanati- 
cism, — far more serious and more deleterious than the great Sec- 
ond Advent outbreak, that occurred here a month or two since. 
That " Midnight Cry'' had reference to a single event, which 
a little time will set right, — unless other expositors shall, after 
April, set the land agog with a new reckoning for the conflagration 
that is to dovcur the earth. And it was not a movement in favor 



GREAT MEETING-HOUSE ERUPTION. 235 

of the Clergy — the regular Clergy — or of any of the established 
Sects. The present is a Baptist excitement. It is carried on in 
behalf of that ambitious and peculiarly gross sect, whose distin- 
guishing ceremonial — imuiersion under water — can bring so 
much more apparent scripture warrant, than can the genteeler 
water ordinance of the politer sects, that it makes them quite 
rampant and forward, as well as more grossly external in their 
religion. All their water ceremonials, by the by, are mere Ju- 
daism — Christianity allowing of neither the dip nor the sprinkle, 
its baptism being wholly internal and of the Spirit. This gene- 
ration, however, can't probably be made to believe it. 

I did not intend taking any special notice of this efferves- 
cence — but to let it pass, and only do what I could, to prevent 
its heaping another burden on to the back of over-laden Anti- 
Slavery, already staggering under the hindrances of Church and 
Clergy. But I can hardly refrain from bearing my testimony 
against it. I am aware the testimony will scarcely be heard. 
The irreligious world will not hear it. They dread Anti-Slavery, 
as much as the anti-christian religionists hate it. A note of re- 
monstrance will hardly be audible, amid the roar of fanaticism 
going on around us. It will avail as little, as Scott said of the 
music of the Welch pipers amid the noise of a battle — " as the 
whistle of the stout mariner amid the roar of the tempest." Yet 
I will bear it. The times may not be so desperate as their signs 
would indicate. 

" Eben" Cummings' Baptist house of worship had been thronged 
for several weeks, like a play-house where tickets were to be had 
for nothing — to hear Jacob Knapp — ^a shrewd, and I should judge 
from what is said of him, a tongoey and somewhat eloquent priest. 
I have not been to hear him, s.ave a few minutes after his first 
arrival. I do not deem it right to countenance these eonsecratea 
priests — or their drag-out worship, in which Truth has no hear- 
ing, and Liberty of Speech no place. From the crowds that 
hurry after him in " broad-road" " thousands," Knapp must have 
no small share of that coarse, harrowing, popular eloquence, so 
attractive in Religion that deals not in principle and duty, but in 
hopes and fears beyond the grave. I deprecate it altogether — it 



'23() GREAT MEETING-HOUSE ERUPTION. 

has no tendency to make people Christians, or to reform them. 
Sunday, the people poured into the village in streams from every 
t[uarter. They looked like the devotees of Juggernaut, flocking 
to a great festival, — or Mussulmans, trooping to Mecca on pil- 
grimage. I went down to the river side with a neighbor who had 
got touched with the infection — to witness a grand immersion — 
the upshot of the week's agitation at the meeting-house. I had 
never witnessed any of these John the Baptist occasions^ and 
thought it might be my duty to give some sketch of it in the 
Herald. I reached the river, and what a sight for New England 
eyes and for our boasted century !> A perfect gathering at Gan- 
ges, or the Yellow River of China. I call it a John Baptist occa- 
sion. It differed from those in many particulars — some unim- 
portant — some vitally important. John probably did not plunge 
his subjects under water. Or if he did, he went under with them. 
For it is written that the priest tccnt down into the water, as well 
as the pupil, and that both came up out of the water. If the dis- 
ciple was dipped, from the expression, " went into and came out 
of," — so was the minister. But probably neither were. They 
both waded in — that is clear — and then, as the object was to 
typify a spiritual cleansing or purifying that was to come after, 
water was AouhiXess poured on. Dipping would not signify puri- 
fying — unless it was accompanied with a drenching and scrub- 
bing, like sheep-washing, or a clothier's rinsing. But this is 
unimportant, only that this plunging is a barbarous and degrading 
business. I can't bear to see humanity handled in that way. It 
is not the way to handle the Image of God. But the materiid 
and important difference is this — John did not profess to baptize 
as a Christian, nor did his followers profess to be baptized as 
such. The Christian Baptism was afterwards at Pentecost — with 
fire — not with water. Christ was baptized — but it was as a 
Jew — as he was circumcised — and as he fulfilled all the Jewish 
ritual. He told John he wanted to be baptized in water, to 
conform to the Jewish ritual. And John admitted that his kind 
of baptism was to be superseded by Christ's. I baptize with 
water, said he, — but there cometh one after me, &c., He shall 
baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. John hesitated 



GREAT MEETING-HOUSE ERUPTION. 237 

to baptize Christ, and said he needed rather to be baptized of 
him. And so he did. The Reverend Eben Cummings would 
not have been so diffident. John knew that Christ would not 
baptize with water, or allow water baptism in his system, and 
that he came to sweep all external ceremonials away — and we 
all know, icho read, that he did not baptize with water — or 
teach his followers to, and that his apostles did what they could, 
to keep the ceremonial from lingering upon their Jewish con- 
verts, as it did with other Jewish rites. Philip went into the 
water with the Ethiopian prince, — and Paul baptized a few, but 
thanked God he did not any more, — for he was not sent to preach 
water or use it, — but to preach the gospel. There was Jire in 
the gospel — no water. Our sectarians can understand water, and 
go into it. It is an outward ceremonial, and if it cleanses at all, 
cleans only the " outside of the cup and the platter." That is a 
cheap cleansing compared to cleansing the heart and life. They 
load down their religion with all the rites of Judaism, and with 
Pagan ceremonials, while they trample Christ's teachings under 
foot, in their lives, and call living them out and disregarding 
ceremonials, Iiifidclity. They believe the Bible — most furious- 
ly, — as a matter of toorship — but they practically set at naught 
every innportant truth in it. They say it can't be practised — that 
it is not to be lived up to till Millennium. They must carry on 
Rd'gion till then. Then they will be willing to live, and not till 
then, as they ought to. These times, they say, Christianity is 
not adapted to. True, it is not, and true also that their religion 
15, exactly adapted to the times. It demands no reformation — 
no godliness of life, nothing but a religious change of feeling, 
and a re/«n'/oMS demeanor, which admits of wholesale participation 
in all that is going on in the profitable world. 

But I am straying from the Baptism. I reached the river, and 
beheld the mortifying, humiliating spectacle. Both banks, below 
the bridge, lined with a gazing — spell-bound multitude of many 
hundreds, intent upon the barba,rous ceremonial, about to begone 
through with. The bridge itself was "loaded with them from end 
to end — in their variegated Sunday dresses — a perfect rainbow 
of living beings, in color as well as in shape — spectators of the 



238 GREAT MEETING-HOUSE ERUPTION. 

priestly display going on in the water below. From the thick 
crowd on the farther side of the stream, where the converts and 
their managers were posted — flanked about with spectators in 
carriages and on foot — pressing to the very water's edge — arose, 
as I was crossing the bridge the Baal shout of " prayer," from 
the hoarse voice of Knapp, accompanied by the Amens of the 
brethren, and now and then by an out burst, in some of the popu- 
lar revival tunes of the day. By the time I reached the river, 
they were ready for the final ceremony, the " burial in baptism," 
as they misquotingly call it. Knapp led out a convert into the 
stream, wading to his middle— bare-headed and murmuring a text 
— arrayed in his monkish robes — and stretching his right hand 
impressively toward heaven, he uttered the baptismal exclama- 
tion, and plunged the poor implicit convert backwards into the 
river — " In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the 
Holy Ghost." It rung along the water like the tones of a Con- 
vent Bell to the ears of the listening multitudes. He then led 
the dripping subject, with proud humility to the shore. Then 
another and another succeeded — both men and women — to 
some fifty or sixty — friend Eben Cunnnings lending his hand 
and voice, though not with the rough grace and impressive- 
hc:?;! i.f Kiiupp, IIc seeined to do it mere by rote, and there was 
nothing of the meaning and hoarse music of voice in his per- 
formance, as in Knapp's. A Methodist minister also bore part, 
with some of his Wesleyan followers, whose sturdier " Amens " 
and slioutings, at once indicated their denomination. There they 
were in the same crowd with the close-communion Baptists, and 
dipping in the same water. After they come out though, and get 
into the fold — no more going together, till they get " to the land 
of Canaan." I did not learn why there was this apparent coa- 
lescing at the river. To show that the revival was not Sectarian, 
probably ! How will it turn out when they come to file off into 
the rival churches 1 

A perfect scene for the Ganges — this pageant-^rather than for 
one of our free and enlightened New England rivers — were it not 
that Idolatry, in spite of the gospel teachings, has made a Ganges 
of every stream in Christendom. Every where the unconscious 



GREAT MEETING-HOUSE ERUPTION. 239 

waters are prostituted to these God-dishonoring, man-debasino- 
rites. I could not behold the spectacle but with grief and sor- 
row, and walked away home. 

I found the streets deserted of all but the thronging carriages 
and their impatient stamping horses, which seemed to line the 
long street, where stands the Baptist Temple. They had brouo-ht 
in the people. They would carry them out again, as full of prin- 
ciple and truth, as they came in, only a degree or two hardened 
against the claims of God and humanity. They have witnessed 
an imposing display of Religion. They have seen the mio-hty 
multitude. They have heard the wild singing and the solemn 
prayer. They have seen the awful priest, walking majestically 
into the river, and there offering up his children to God. They 
have read the word baptistn in the Scriptures. They are taught 
it is by water, and is a Christian ordinance. Dipping is its most 
impressive and imposing form. The river side — and the stream, 
and the o'er-arching heavens, and the voice of the Priest, and 
the shout of the converts, and the throng and gaze of the hushed 
multitude — all have conspired to strike them with overwhelming 
effect, and they go home dreading the day of their own death, 
and the day of judgment, that shall overtake them without this 
Religion. 

And what is this Religion ? It is a Religion, that sanctions 
war and hanging. It trains in the muster field. It enlists into 
the army and navy. It prays over a training and a court. It 
goes as chaplain into the service. It enslaves men, women and 
children. It works them to death on the gory plantation. It 
sells them at auction like cattle. It sells the brethren and disci- 
ples of Christ, whose religion it professes itself to be. It sells 
Christ himself there — if doing it to the least of these his breth- 
ren, as he says, is doing it to him. 

This Religion is overrunning the land. It hates Anti-Slavery 
and Peace and Temperance. I trust it is flourishing to its own 
catastrophe. It is waxing proud. " Pride goeth before destruc- 
tion." It is " haughty," I trust it is the haughtiness that " goeth 
before a fall." 

The Sects here are in conflict. The Meeting-Houses are 



240 GREAT MEETING-HOUSE ERUPTION. 

rivalling each other, with hot emulation. I wish them all a Kil- 
kenny-cat success. Our Unitarian and Universalist friends are 
defending against Knapp's furious assaults upon them. But it is 
with sectarian weapons. In a sectarian warfare I warn them they 
cannot cope with him. As plain men and women, as true re- 
formers they might, but as meeting-house sectarians they can't. 
Knapp will i)rove an overmatch for them, for he has " Hell " 
and " Fire " among his war cries, and they have not. He can 
preach Hell and Damnation and fear, to his auditory, and they 
can preach nothing but their cold rationalities — if they are ra- 
tiojial. Hell is the life of Sectarian Religion. Fire and Brim- 
stone on one side, with " screaming Devils," as friend Knapp 
calls them, and Heaven on the other — to stir the fears and the 
hopes — Christ's 7iamc and person — His image on the cross, in- 
stead of Ids truth — as the Catholic uses his image and his picture 
— all these are a play upon the imagination, before which cold 
Universalism and Unitarianism, were they ever so reasonable, 
are utterly unavailing. And those other Evangelical Houses — 
Bouton's and Noyes' — Knapp will carry the multitude all away 
from them — and he ought to. For if their worship is right, any 
of it, Knapp's ought to take the lead. He goes ahead of them 
all, in activity and zeal. They have no life — no zeal — no feel- 
ing — no power in them. If Knapp should keep on a month lon- 
ger, he would desolate every one of them, and friend Peter Ten- 
broeck's reading house to boot — and leave them " a beggarly 
account of empty boxes." And I really wish he might. They 
are all dead-a-head obstacles to the Anti-slavery Cause, and any 
moral change that should demolish them, would necessarily be 
for the better. Anti-slavery would stand a better chance with 
new converts, than with old, case-hardened church-members. 
New converts have some life in them, and generally some con- 
science. If their priest were out of the way, we would enlist 
them in the cause of humanity, and make men and Christians of 
them, if we could only get access to them, before they are tied up 
into the church — in the stanchalls of sect. After that is done to 
them, they are within the overseership of the priest and his ma- 
jority; and they must undergo a revolution before they can get 
free. 



NEWBURYPORT JAIL. 241 



We must have a series of Christian meetings here in behalf 
of Anti-slavery. Not to deliver the agitated community from the 
infection of the Baptist meeting-house — as they greatly desire — 
for they are extensively troubled. They are wrong, and there- 
fore afraid. But to proclaim God's truth, for the benefit of 
humanity. If they will hear it, it will make them free, and save 
them from the agitations of Sect and the terrors of Damnation. 
If they will become thorough-going, disinterested abolitionists, 
these things won't move them. Anti-slavery is now a great 
test for God. Whoever embraces it conscientiously and from 
right motive, will find rest to his troubled soul. There is no bet- 
ter occasion or test extant than this. 



NEWBURYPORT JAIL. 



[From the Herald of Freedom of Oct. 28, 1842.] 

This christian institution of ours is now, in my opinion, the 
focal point of Anti-slavery attention, as containing within its 
merciless precincts an advocate and fearless asserter of the 
Liberty of Speech. Speech is the main weapon of Anti-slavery. 
Speech is the battering Ram, or rather the Cannon, to crumble 
down and pulverize the ramparts of Slavery. Nothing can de- 
molish those walls but free Speech. If Speech is free in the 
land, those walls and the citadel within them, are exposed to 
overthrow, and the dragon within the citadel may be hauled 
out, in all its uncouth and scaly monstrousness, and left to coil 
and twist in death under the mortal influence of killing day- 
light. If Speech is bound in the land, those walls, that citadel, 
and the monster within it are safe forever. The life of Anti- 
slavery then is freedom of speech. In behalf of that freedom, 
and for asserting it — Thomas Parnell Beach is shut up in New- 
buryport Jail. I call Anti-slavery's attention to that Jail. I want 
Thomas Beach to know that so long as he suffers there for 
Anti-slavery, Abolitionists will turn all eyes and all hearts to his 
position, and to him. Let him not find that he is deserted and 
21 



242 NEWBURYPORT JAIL, 

forgotten. Let him not be mortified and disheartened, at the 
thought that his great movement is unappreciated, and that he 
too, like other reformers, has got to wait till-after ages shall get 
light enough to do justice to his memory. Of what avail to him 
is the respect that will be paid to his memory ? And let me tell 
abolitionists, that not much respect will be paid to theirs, unless 
they appreciate and sustain him noio. 

Slavery lives because the slave can't be heard. If he could 
tell his story, the world would rise en masse, and rush to the plan- 
tation. They would not have such an accursed scene going on 
upon the earth's surface. But the slave can't be heard. His 
tongue is out. He is dumb. His advocates have tried to speak 
for him. His hellish enslavers are so many of them church mem- 
bers and clergy, that the clergy of the free States say his advo- 
cates must not be heard. It will break up the church, and break 
us up, if slavery is disturbed. They shut up the people in their 
Sunday prison the meeting-house, and have sj holificd the day, 
the liouse — and themselves, in the people's eyes, that they dare 
neither hear the slave's advocate, nor think a thought on any 
moral subject whatever. 

Beach has visited the people in this prison-house, and for it the 
clergy have imprisoned him. They have done it by their under- 
strappers. Shall the abolitionists forget Beach ? Not if they are 
abolitionists. The Anti-slavery press should thunder at his prison 
gates. And Beach himself thunder from his cell. — He is thun- 
dering. 

If he is to be imprisoned with impunity for asserting the Right 
of Speech, then Anti-slavery is hopeless. I tell abolitionists, they 
cannot advance another inch in their enterprise, till the clergy 
are routed from their vantage ground on the breast of the people, 
which they hold by virtue of this tyrant meeting-house system. 
The people dare not hear the truth. They are afraid of the 
ministers. The ministers tell them it is infidelity, and if they 
listen to it, they will go to Hell when they die. And they are 
afraid it is so. And why should they hear us ? Are we to expect 
the people will be willing to go to Hell, for the sake of the truth ? 
They are not so desperately in love with it as that. 



NEVVBURYPORT JAIL. 243 

The clergy have got tlieiii. And their hold can't be broken, 
unless somebody can speak besides themselves, at worship. They 
should have equal right with others, but not the exclusive right. 
They have the whole now. And if it is disputed, they can get 
the daring intruder shut up in prison. Is it for abolitionists to 
turn their backs upon him when shut up there? Will they go 
further, and regret the imprudence and impropriety , that led him 
to incur imprisonment 1 Will they join the clergy, and deny his 
right or his duty to speak hi the public worship? 

I deny the right of worship where every body can't speak. 
The runaway slave has a right to come into any house of wor- 
ship, and thunder the story of his enslavement in the ears of 
the congregation. I wish to Heaven the next one that passes a 
northern meeting-house would do it. I wish he would rush in, 
in prayer time, and charge his unutterable wrongs and the 
wrongs of his people, on the hypocritical wretches that are 
there mocking God and Humanity, with their abominable and vile 
oblations. I wish every Rimmon House in the non-slave states, 
could be simultaneously stormed and broken up, by the apparition 
of a runaway slave, — panting, bleeding — gory from the Hells 
of the South ! See if they would carry on their mockery in his 
presence ! See if they would drag him out ! See if your soph- 
omore Noyeses and your Secretary Stevenses would drag a run- 
away slave out of their comely-looking church out here — as they 
dragged out his eloquent advocate Stephen Foster a few Sab- 
baths{?) ago. 

Beach is in Jail for the Cause of the Slave and for the Right 
of Speech ! I hui-l the fact before the abolitionists and into the 
teeth of the pro-slavery community. " Liberty of Speech" in 
New England is the liberty of a stone cell ! 



244 THE HUTCHINSON SINGERS. 

THE HUTCHINSON SINGERS. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Dec. 9, 1842.] 

These Canary birds have been here again, charming tlie ear 
of our Northern Winter with their wood-note music. Four of 
them were here, out of a nest of fourteen. All of them, I under- 
stand, are to flock together to a warble, at Nashua, at our coming 
Thanksgiving — though one has to come from Illinois. The 
Concert will be worth the long flight — and well worth a journey 
from here there, to listen to. I had rather keep Thanksgiving 
(if at all) on the melody of these living birds, than on a whole 
poultry yard full of dead turkeys and goslins, which make up the 
usual Thanksgiving feast, as well as the usual gratitude. 

These " New Hampshire Rainers" sung here two evenings, to 
rather small audiences. One night they were at an out-of-the-way 
hall, and the other night there was a sharp snow-storm. It would 
not have kept the people from a Baptist meeting, to hear the 
brimstone melody of Jacob Knapp, but it kept them from hear- 
ing the simple, heart-touching strains of the " yEolian Vocalists." 
Perhaps I am partial to the Hutchinsons — for they are abolition- 
ists. It need not affright them to have it announced. It won't. 
If it would scare away their listeners, it would not scare them- 
selves. But it won't. Human Nature will go and hearken, and 
be charmed at their lays — and the time is coming, if it has not 
come already, when the j)ublic conscience will feel quieted at the 
thought of having heard music from the friends of the Slave, 
and patronized it. How natural for Music, as well as Poetry to 
be on the side of Humanity and the Captive. And how glori- 
ously employed it would be in Humanity's special service. I 
wish the Hutchinsons had a series of Anti-Slavery Melodies, to 
sing at their Concerts. A Marseilles Anti-Slavery Hymn, for 
instance, with a Swiss " Rans de Vasche." An English " Rule 
Britannia," — a Scotch " Scots wha ha'e." An Irish " Battle of 
the Boyne," or a poor American Anti-Slavery " Yankee Doodle." 
Give me the ballad making, for a revolution, said some of the 
sages, and you may have all the law making. What an agitation 



THE HUTCHINSON SINGERS. 245 

might the fourteen Hutchinsons sing up in the land, with all 
their voices and instruments strung to the deliverance of the 
bondman ! Would the South send on to our General Court to have 
them beheaded ? The General Court would not touch z. feather 
of their crests, if they could only hear one of their strains. 

A word of their music here, the other night. Among the 
songs sung, was " The Maniac." I had heard it recited with 
great talent, but I was not prepared to hear it sung. One of the 
younger of the brothers performed it with appalling power. It 
was made to be sung, I think, rather than recited or acted. Music 
alone, seems capable of giving it its wild and maniac expression, 
A poor maniac is imprisoned — and starts the song at the glance 
of the Jailor's Light entering his cell. The despairing lament 
and the hopeless imploration for release, accompanied with pro- 
testations that he is not mad, are enough to break the heart. It 
ought to have been heard by every Asylum Superintendent, though 
they have grown less of the Jailor than formerly. 

The Airs were modern — most or all of them, and though very 
sweet, were less interesting to me, than if they had been songs I 
knew. If they had had some of the Old Songs intermingled, I 
think it would better please every body. Some of Burns'. The 
Bonnie Doon, or The Highland Mary, for instance. Few pro- 
fessed vocalists could touch either of these, without profanation. 
I think the Hutchinsons might, for they are simple and natural in 
their music. I should love to hear them warble 

" Ye Banks and Braes and Streams, 
Around the Castle of Montgomery !" 

Their wood-land tone — their clear enunciation and their fine ap- 
preciation of the poetry — together with their perfect freedom 
from affectation and stage grimace, would enable them to do 
justice to the great Scottish Songster. And it would do the peo- 
ple good to hear them sing him. Will they take the suggestion, 
and when they sing next, at least as far North as here, will they 
sprinkle their catalogue, (in the singing, if not in the handbill,) 
with a strain or two from the Glens of the Scotch Highlands, 
And Rans de Vasche, too, I would venture to mention to them— 
21* 



246 THE HUTCHINSON SINGERS. 

or The Cattle Chorus — the Lowing of the Cows among the Alps, 
that makes the Swiss Exile mad, when he hears it in a foreign 
land. Their spirited imitation would tell in that, with grand 
effect. 

Oh ! this Music is one of God's dearest gifts. I do wish men 
would make more of it. How humanizing it is — and how puri- 
fying — elevating and ennobling to the spirit ! And how it has 
been prostituted and perverted ! That accursed drum and fife, — 
how they have maddened mankind ! And the deep bass boom 
of the cannon, chiming in, in the chorus of the battle — that 
trumpet, and wild, charging bugle, — how they set the military 
devil into a man, and make him into a soldier ! Think of the 
Human Family, falling upon one another, at the inspiration of 
Music 1 How must God feel at it 1 To see those harp strings. 
He meant should be waked to a love bordering on divine, strung 
and swept to mortal hate and butchery. And the perversion is 
scarcely less, when music is profaned to the superstitious service 
of Sect, — its bloody-minded worship — its mercenary and bigot 
offerings. How horribly it echoes from the heartless and priest- 
led Meeting-House ! 

But it will all come right, by and bye. The world is out of 
tune now. But it will be tuned again, and all discord become 
harmony. When Slavery and War are abolished, and hanging 
and imprisoning, and all hatred and distrust — when the strife of 
humanity shall be, who will love most and help the readiest, when 
the tyrant steeple shall no longer tower, in sky-aspiring contempt 
of humanity's cowering dwellings about its base, when pulpits 
and priests and hangmen and generals — gibbets and jails, shall 
have vanished from the surface of the delivered earth, then shall 
be heard music here, where they used to stand. The hills shall 
then break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field clap 
their hands. 



SPEECH. 247 



SPEECH. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Dec. 30, 1842.] 

We speak of the " freedom" of it, and of " Liberty of Speech," 
as though it were even to be claimed that the human voice should 
not be regulated at all times and under all circumstances, by the 
arbitrary caprice of tyrants. The human voice is free of course. 
It is as naturally and inalienably free of every power but the 
man's that utters it, as God is free, and language would hardly 
be marred more by the phrase freedom of God than by such ex- 
pressions as Liberty of Speech. Who should think of regulating 
a man's speech but himself ? What has he got it for, but to use 
at his discretion, and what has he discretion for, if not to govern 
himself with, in speech and thought. If a man has not discretion 
enough to govern his own utterance, how can he govern his 
neighbor's? How can any number of men, each and all incom- 
petent to regulate themselves, regulate others? Those others 
meantime competent to regulate them, though incapable of brid- 
ling their own tongues — or rather of guiding them without bridle, 
as the Parthian manages his unreined steed. Human speech is 
sovereign. Nobody can govern it but the individual it belongs 
to. Nobody ought to think of it. Every body has his hands full 
with his own, which he can manage and ouglit to, and which he 
cannot innocently commit to the manage of another. It can be 
done. Speech is good for nothing unless it be done. Men better 
be without tongues and organs and powers, than not use them 
sovereignly. If it be not safe to entrust self-government of speech 
to mankind, there had better not be any mankind. Slavery is 
worse than non-existence. A society involving it is worse than 
none. The earth had better go unpeopled than inhabited by 
vassals. How it must look to spectator eyes — tenanted by ham- 
pered immortality, with clipped wings and hand-cuffed wrists and 
fettered spirits. What angel would ever light upon it but that 
dragon-pinioned one who as John Milton has poetized — lighted 
once from Hell on its " bare outside." Better have been kept 
bare to this day, than peopled by a tongue-tied race of men. 



248 THE BOSTON MISCELLANY. 



THE BOSTON MISCELLANY, 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Feb. 10, 1843.] 

A monthly, literary periodical, edited by H. T. Tuckerman, 
and for sale by John D. Norton, bookseller, of this town. It is 
an elegant pamphlet, embellished with engravings in the fine style 
to which they are carrying that Jine art in this country. January 
and February numbers have been kindly handed in at our printing 
office, by the agent. If I could say any thing to advance his 
interest in disposing of the work, I would gladly do it. And I 
could, if I had the skill, say considerable in its favor as a spirited 
and able literary Journal. 

I feel awkward at attempting to touch any thing literary. Not 
merely that I make clumsy work of it, but because I feel doubtful 
as to the utility of promoting the cultivation of mere letters. For 
what is literature, but the luxury of words and periods. What is 
the use of it! It has nothing of the power of unlettered talk, or 
illiterate writing — if such there may be. It engenders only an 
artificial language, that nobody talks, or can talk, except those fic- 
titious creatures, the scholars — -and they, only when they are not 
in earnest ; when they are learned. Put them to their necessities, 
and they forget their book style — their compound words and their 
constructed periods, and have to talk off just like any body. 
Literature is a mere accomplishment, intended to be displayed 
only by the idle. It is like the parlor furniture, to be used (if it 
can be called use) only by company. It is but pedantry, in its 
best estate. True, strong, human thinking don't want it, and 
can't make use of it, if it happen to possess it. It has, in fact, 
to get rid of it, before it can make the natural and necessary use 
of speech. Human speech is of almighty power, almost, when 
unalloyed by learning. And yet the strong-minded, unlettered 
man bows reverently before the helpless scholar. It is a grand 
mistake. This literature produces nothing for humanity. It 
originates nothing, improves nothing, invents nothing, discovers 
nothing. It talks hard words, about the labors of others, and is 
reckoned higher and more meritorious for it, than genius and labor 



THE BOSTON MISCELLANY. 249 

are for achieving what learning can only descant upon. Learn- 
ing trades on the capital of unlettered mind. It struts in stolen 
plumage, and it is mere plumage. A learned man resembles an 
owl, in more respects than the matter of wisdom. Like that sol- 
emn bird, he is, about, all feathers. 

The February number of the Miscellany has, among other 
spirited articles, an essay on the genius and character of Macau- 
lay, the celebrated critic and reviewer. It is written with un- 
common activity of style, and power of language. I have seen 
but little of Macaulay's writing — but should think the writer of, 
this essay, displayed a good deal of the peculiar talent that dis- 
tinguishes him — and were not Macaulay the subject of the article, 
it might pass pretty well for one of his own. It is in his keen, 
brave, dashing style — maintaining the flowing period and the 
almost good sense of common talk, amid comprehensive words 
and scholar-like phraseology. But it is only about books and 
their writers, and of what consequence to humanity are either of 
these. They are but copies — and resemblances of copies — when 
we might be gazing on originals. Works, whole Alexandrian 
libraries of them — what are they good for? Common sense " es- 
teems them as stubble." They are food for nobody but the moth, 
and his fellow-student the book worm. Some old invader burnt 
up ever so many of them, in a famous library, long ago, I believe 
in Egypt. They called him a Vandal, or some such rude name 
for it. But he might have been a very clever barbarian for all 
that. I wish he had burnt nothing more valuable — viz. human 
abodes and their cultivated fields. Our Second Advent friends 
contemplate a grand conflagration, about the first of April next. 
I should be willing there should be one — ^^if it could be confined 
to the productions of the press, with which the earth is absolutely 
smothered. I would not care if there should be a bonfire of all 
the learned libraries — especially the divinity, and that would burn 
like tinder — most of it. 

Humanity wants precious few books to read — but the great 
living, breathing, immortal and glorious volume of Providence. 
" The proper study of mankind," — that this is " Man," and 
God's other works, is not mere poetry, There is truth in it. 



250 RICHARD D. WEBB. 



Life, real life, how to live — how to treat one another, and how to 
trust God in matters beyond our ken and occasion ; these are the 
lessons to learn, and you can find nothing about them in the li- 
braries. I would add a word more of the Miscellany and its other 
spirited and able articles, but toil-worn Anti-slavery can have little 
leisure or fancy for literature, while a sixth of the country wel- 
ters in brute slavery, and the mass of the other five sixths, in 
heartless indifferency, or religious rage, at the feeble attempts 
making for its disenthralraent. Literature shows, on such a coun- 
try, like the marble gleams on a whited sepulchre, or like finery 
on a harlot, and the gaudier it is, the more painfully unbecoming. 
I wish we might get free of slavery, before we multiply our lite- 
rature much further — or our literary (or religious) institutions. 



RICHARD D. WEBB. 



[From the Herald of Freedom of March 24, 1843.] 

I HAVE long intended to introduce this dear Irish fViend, more 
fully and particularly to the readers of the Herald of Freedom, 
whose columns have been graced, by some of their finest verses, 
from his pen, and into which, I am copying some letters from the 
Freeman's Journal, a Dublin paper, to the editor of which they 
were addressed by Webb, on occasion of the plunder of his 
household furniture, by a parish priest. The letters are most 
pertinent to our Anti-Slavery occasions, — for they illustrate the 
Priestly office. Not the Catholic priest, — but the Protestant, — 
and priesthood the world over, and in all times, since it first be- 
gan to p?«y vpon mankind. Had the Priest, who robbed Rich- 
ard Webb of his chairs and his tables, been a Catholic, our clergy 
would have been ready enough to cry out at his Roman cupidity 
and audacity. But it was a Protestant priest — an evangelical 
divine, — an orthodox minister, — which " alters the case." Our 
whole bevy of Divinity here, in all its sectarian variety, are in 
solemn fellowship with the Reverend plunderer. 

I received the papers from Ireland, containing these letters 



RICHARD D. WEBB. 051 

last December, and should have published them immediately, but 
one of them got mislaid or destroyed, and I have had to send 
clear to Dublin to supply it; — for I determined, if I could, that 
these elegant and two-edged epistles should be recorded in the 
Herald's columns. I wrote in the time of it, a rough sketch of 
the writer, to go in before them, and am sorry I have lost that 
also, for it was penned when I felt in the mood of it, and I can 
now neither recal it, nor hit on any thing to answer its place. — 
I must try, however, to tell the reader who Richard D. Webb is. 

I shall never forget my first introduction to him. It was in the 
gallery of Free Masons' Hall, London, whither Garrison, Remond, 
Adams and myself, had ascended, to be spectators of the fettered 
Anti-Slavery Convention going on in the gorgeous Hall below. 
It was the morning of 18th of June, 1840. It was as magnifi- 
cent and brilliant a Convention as subject Philanthropy had ever 
assembled. Old Organized Anti-Slavery, however, fresh from 
one of its Bunker Hill conflicts with tyranny this side the water, 
could not enter in at its narrow portals — at a gate so strait, that 
it would not admit the tiny form of Lucretia Mott. We could 
not condescend, as representatives of the American Abolitionists, 
to go where their credentials were not a passport. So we betook 
ourselves to the spectators' gallery. It was at once rumored in 
the Hall, that Garrison was in the Gallery, and our position soon 
became the centre of observation and resort. Among the earliest 
who came tip from the Convention, to give us the right hand of 
fellowship, was Richard D. Webb. I have not time to mention 
the other distinguished names, that shortly after graced the gal- 
lery with their presence. — The Aliens, the Haughtons, of Ire- 
land — the Peases, the Opies, the Fryes and the Lady Byrons of 
England. 

It was not long before I became deeply interested in Richard 
Webb. It was not his personal appearance — for that is not 
striking to a stranger. It was not what he said — for he said but 
little. It was what he didn't say, and how he didn't say it, his 
most " expressive silence," that made me feel myself in the pre- 
sence of a man of genius. And then his kind and tasteful atten- 
tions—his significant and original manners, his modesty and his 



iio^i 



RICHARD D. WEBB. 



keen good sense. I felt strongly interested to be with him, and 
was liighly gratified, not to say flattered at his kindnesses to me. 
I remember the jaunts we had together, in famous old London, 
atid the spots we visited. Old Charing Cross, with its equestrian 
statue of King Charles I, and the interesting facts he told me 
about it of the times of Cromwell. — The Palace at White Hall, 
built by Inigo Jones, and the door the unhappy Charles was led 
out at, to the platform, for execution. — The Queen's Horse 
Guards, a dreadful troop — we paused to look at, there at the head 
quarters of England's Military Power, — every monster of them, 
in perfect uniform ; accoutred all over, like so many porcupines 
— their appalling whiskery scarce blacker than their weather- 
darkened faces — all mounted on horses exactly alike, black as a 
raven, not a white hair about them all, and as heavy as the char- 
ger rode by King Richard in the Lists. — We saw their move- 
ments at their royal quarters, at White Hall, and went in among 
them. They were the creatures that rode right over Marshal 
Grouchy's veteran cavalry, at Waterloo. We passed under the 
eaves of Westminster Hall, — and by the little guide board to 
" Poet's Corner," mounted at the entrance of a lane in the rear 
of Old Westminster Abbey. (We had not time to go in.) It 
was fine to see these things with the interesting Irishman, and I 
there, from far New Hampshire. Webb seemed at home with 
the history of every thing we saw. We Went to the Cloisters of 
the Abbey. T wish I could describe them. Low, lancet-arched, 
gloomy, ancient passages, where the Monkhood of the twilight 
ages used to p-ace their penitential rounds, — paved all over with 
dilapidated grave stones, with their worn-out Latin inscriptions — 
chiselled there in memory of this and that Abbot, of the ninth or 
tenth century ! It was rare to roam them with Richard Webb, 
and hear his brief, impressive remark. He knew every thing 
about the whole, that reading could impart — and told it, as we 
Yankees cannot tell things. 

But I cannot begin to give account of where we went, and 
what we saw. Then again a visit with him to the London Zoo- 
idgical gardens — a congregation of the whole animal creation, a 
rare place to be at, with him. And many a time besides, I had 



RICHARD D. WEBB. 053 

with him in London, before going to Dublin, where he so loving- 
ly met dear Garrison and me, on the wharled bank of the Liffey, 
as we stepped ashore from the Glasgow Steamer, and took us, post 
haste, through the crowded streets of the Irish capital, to IGO 
Great Brunswick, his own more than welcome home. There we 
had a great-souled time with the Webbs, the Aliens, and the 
Haughtons, the Cochrans, the Downeses, and the Drummond<. 
But only for three days. I marvel we came away so soon, but Gar- 
rison wanted to go home. We ought to have staid three months. 
I never met such a circle as that Dublin one, and never expect to 
again. I have seen the Boston Abolitionists, the Chapmans, the 
Sargents, the Southwicks, the Q.uincys, the Pierponts, the Phil- 
ipses and the Jacksons, and the others of that constellation, too 
many to name, — but they were not Irish. It takes Old Ireland 
to top out darling human character. Genius, refinement, heart, 
(a bosom-full of it) simplicity, hospitality warmer than brotherly 
love, high-souled philanthropy — Reform of the most darino- cast 
— I never felt so much at home any where before. Under the 
roof of my own mother's son, I never experienced such a liberty 
as I could not help fueling, in a single day, among those Irish 
"hearts. And when we sailed for America, who should be there, 
on the deck of the Acadia, as she weighed anchor in the harbor 
of Liverpool, over two hundred miles from Dublin, but dear, 
generous Richard Webb, — to bid us the loving, parting good 
bye. God bless him forever and ever ! 

But I was going to say a word of his character and person, — 
though something of the former may be guessed at already. 
And the letters will give some taste of the quality of his genius 
as a writer. He is a short, stout, bald-headed duaker, his hat not 
quite in full fellowship, — the brim approximating a little towards 
the narrowness pf the world's people's. A half-collared coat, 
with, I think, checked pantaloons, and shoes, with the thick soles 
of Old England. He looks in the face like the portraits of Dean 
Swift, — only there is heart in his countenance, which the Dean's 
lacks. There is that grave, unlaughing humor, which Swift must 
have felt, whether he showed it or not. There is a print of him 
in the Penny Magazine, which always makes me think of Webb 
23 



254 RICHARD D. WEBB. 



In company Webb takes little part in conversation. He hears 
every word — but says little except by way of stirring up talk. 
He is meditating your character, which he studies with a staunch 
curiosity. He acts, in a circle, like an amateur amid a gallery 
of portraits, only he does not seem to be examining any body 
He seems to have a perfect passion for character, and will get in- 
to your very inner man, and find you all out, — at least all the 
good of you, — for he does not dream you have any thing else. 
He literally " judges other folks by himself," in this behalf He 
rummages after character, not to expose it — or to use it for his 
purposes — but from the mere love of it. He does not stare at you. 
He only considers you, and weighs you in the nice scales of taste. 
He must have amassed a great amount of the article of charac- 
ter. His mind must be a depot of it, and he might write a rare 
book of sketches, — for he has seen the best ccuipany of his time 
in Ireland and Britain. He went to Scotland on purpose to see 
Walter Scott, and could give a portrait of him, fuller and more 
graphic, I doubt not, than the world will be likely to get of the 
great Magician. I wish he would. 

Webb's standing in Dublin may be estimated from the fact, 
that he is highly respected, and familiarly associated with, by- 
such folks as O'Connell, though, as a philanthropist, the great 
Orator does not, in my apprehension, come up to Webb and his 
Dublin associates. He is by profession a printer. These letters 
I said, give some idea of his temper and talent as a writer. I 
wish I could print some of his private letters. In these he excels 
all writers I have ever seen. He writes, as well as any body else 
could talk — if they were ever so earnest, and ever so honest. 
But his hand writing cannot be printed. It is " past finding out." 
It looks like hieroglyphics taken in short-hand. 

Webb's father is living — a hale, ruddy, fine specimen of the 
old Irish citizen. He was over at London at the " World's Con- 
vention," with his three sons and their wives — with more charac- 
ter among them, I venture to say, than was carried into the Ark 
by the like household, who embarked, of old, for Mount Ararat. 
The other two sons are James H. and Thomas — of whom suffice 
to say here — they are worthy their brotherhood. I hope Steam 



LABOR. 255 

will undergo such augmentation of improvements, as soon to 
bring them all over here, to some of our New-England (and New- 
Hampshire) Conventions. 

But I am hurried — the printer wants copy — I can say nothing 
as I wished to — and regret I have lost my December manuscript, 
which, heavy as it was, had some life in it compared to this 
This is most *' lame and impotent " for a sketch of such a man 
as Richard Webb. He is a Poet — a Genius, an Abolitionist, 
and an Irishman. What more could be said of a man. Read 
his letters, and see how a protestant priest can treat such a man, 
I give his plundering Reverence joy of his tables and hig chairs, 
seeing he has to digest them along with Webb's letters. 



LABOR. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of May 5, 1843.] 

It is enslaved outright, in one portion of this democratic Re- 
public, — and despised heartily in every portion of it. Wealth, 
and Edjucation and Indolence, and empty-headed Vanity in all 
its departments, are worshipped. Labor worships them, among 
the rest, and despises itself The laboring man, generally, de- 
spises his vocation, and himself en account of it, — about as 
our Negro brother despises himself, on account of his com- 
plexion, &LC. 

And Labor is generally poor, as well as degraded. It earns all 
that is earned, by any body in the world, and might naturally be 
expected to share some of its own earnings. The Slave gets 
none of his, and the free Laborer as little of his as Usage and 
the Religion of the times can't help his having. These get away 
from him all they can, and generally leave him ragged poor. 
And he thinks it all right, — or if his nature is restless under the 
horrible perversion, he does not dream that there is any fault in 
his tyrants and plunderers. He adores and worships them, and 
despises his brother in poverty and toil. Half the time — nine 
tenths of the time, he would be a tyrant himself, as they are, if 



256 LABOR. 

he had the power. It is the vice of the general morality, that he 
is so, and that springs from the Religion of the People. A peo- 
ple's religion is generally, perhaps always, their own viciousness, 
exalted and sanctified, and made sublime enough to be worship- 
ped. The People create their Gods in their own image, — put 
thunder and lightning, &/C., into their hands, and thus worship 
their own wickedness. Our Religion, whatever name you may 
call it by — as it is preached and practised, and carried on — 
makes us what we are, and, among other deplorable effects, places 
Labor where it is, — and sets up Idleness over it, as its Lord and 
Master. 

I deny that Labor ought to be degraded, or ought to starve. I 
am hold to deny it. I hazard the startling assertion, that Work 
ought not to go hungry, or naked, but have something to eat, and 
to wear. It may cost some of our remaining subscribers, to say 
it, but I will risk it. I say nobody, that earns a living by labor, 
ought to go without it, and I might venture further — that nobody, 
able to labor, but who does not labor, ought to have a living. I 
would give them one for the honor of the race, or as God sends 
rain on the unjust, but they do not deserve it. No laborer should 
want, and no idler should enjoy, — and no man has a right to be 
idle. He may be for all me, but not for all himself. He owes it 
to himself, to earn his bread at the least, — and to earn it by useful 
labor, and not useless — much less mischievous labor, — as too 
many t.arn, or gti it by now. Further, as no man has a right to 
be idle, and live on the earnings of others, so no man ought to 
be obliged to support the idle, or to labor much (if any) beyond 
support of himself There ought, of course, to be labor enough 
done on the earth, to support all its inhabitants, richly — and if it 
were properly shared, no one would need do more, and none 
would do less. Men have no right to overwork themselves, if 
they can help it. They owe it to their nature and to God, who is 
dishonored (if that is possible) in its degradation. It is in dero- 
gation of glorious human nature, to overwork it, and more grossly 
so, to have it slothful and idle, and basely live on the unrequited 
toil of others. 

Every one owes it to himself, as well as to his otherwise over- 



^ J^ABOR. 257 

burdened and injured neighbor, to do manual labor enough, to 
earn the bread he consumes, and all his support. He must earn 
it for himself, or somebody else must earn it for him, which is 
clearly wrong. He may say he pays for his support, but he ought 
to consider that he pays money that is not his own, — for he did 
not earn it — and social combinations that cast it upon him, are 
vicious, — and in violation of human welfare and right. I would 
not disturb them violently — but I think they are wrong, and will 
say so. 

If every body worked as much as they ought to, nobody would 
be obliged to work more than they ought to, which would be a 
mighty amelioration of human condition and character. A peo- 
ple broken down with labor, whether free labor (so called) or 
slave, must be morally degraded. It is easy for a Priesthood to 
ride such a people. They have not the leisure, nor the elasticity 
of soul, to appreciate or assert their own freedom. Their backs 
are bowed down, like a kneeling camel's, and the Priest mounts 
them easily, and rides, all their miserable lives long. 

Every body ought to earn his own living by manual labor, and 
if practicable, had better earn thus much, by cultivating the face 
of the ground. To say nothing of the healthfulness of such la- 
bor and the enjoyment of it, — which every body needs — there is 
an independence about it, a certainty of renunieration, that human 
injustice or folly cannot defeat. And then it is due the face of 
our mother earth. The glorious old mother, her children, (for 
they all repose in her motherly lap) owe it to her, to keep her 
whole face, her entire surface, where there is terra firma for the 
noble plough, dressed to her taste and their own. They ought to 
deck her " universal face in pleasant green." And labor enough 
done by all, to earn their living, would do it. There need not a 
man overtoil himself, to turn all earth into a paradise, — a fit 
abode for gods — and godlike creatures would then inhabit it. 
Mechanical labor is useful, necessary, honorable. But prosecu- 
ted constantly and uninterruptedly, it is not so healthful or plea- 
sant as when mingled with the cultivation ;m 1 adornment of the 
earth, nor so sure of requital. He who vests his labor in the 
faithful ground is dealing directly with God, and human fraud or 



258 LABOR. 

weakness does not intervene between him and his requital. He 
is very apt to get his reward. The mechanic is quite apt to fail 
of his. No mechanic has a set of customers equally trustworthy 
us Gcd and the elements, — or so unfailingly able, as well as will- 
ing to pay. No savings Bank even is so sure as the old earth, 
to restore all its deposites and with overflowing and gushing 
usury. Every mechanic knows his own condition best, perhaps. 
But am I extravagant in saying it would be well for every one to 
cultivate the earth enough to raise his own support? There is 
enough earth for all — provided humanity could be allowed to come 
on to it and dig. 

The earth is as fine a one as God could furnish us. I dcn't 
believe the Clergy or the Legislature could better it — or our hon- 
ester friends who are looking for the Prince of Peace to come 
with the torch cf the incendiary and set it afire. I tell our con- 
flagration friends, by the way, if Christ touches match to this 
glorious earth of ours, (which if He be God, He made to the 
best of His Almighty skill,) and burns it up — or burns a single 
human creature that sins and suffers on its surface, he is not the 
" Son of man " revealed in the New Testament. There is not a 
trait of character of him, delineated in the gospel, that such an 
act would not violate and outrage. No, let no such injiajnmato- 
ry scenes be anticipated. Would loc burn the earth, and our 
miserable neighbors, — if we felt right towards them ? No — nor 
if we felt right, should we ever expect God would do any such 
thing. It is only when we are wrong and wicked, ourselves, that 
we clothe our God with such an incendiary and revengeful dispo- 
sition. Nero .set Rome afire and played on the fiddle at sight of 
the conflagration — Nero would most naturally attribute to God 
the disposition he was then manifesting. 

But the earth is as beautiful as God could make it. They 
complain of its being cursed. The only curse now resting on it, 
it seems to me, is the curse of an indolent, idle tyranny, and the 
curse of down-trodden, back-broken labor. No wonder the earth 
is cursed and blasted. See war let loose upon it, under the sanc- 
tion of religion, to devastate what poor, desponding Labor has 
done towards its adornment. See how it drives its harnessed 



SPRING. 259 



horses through the harvest field, and ruts it with its accursed can- 
non wheels, and tears the sweet green sward with its murderous 
shot And how it mows down the laborers, manuring the earth 
with their bones. That is all war ever does for agriculture. It 
manures the ground with the blood and the bones of the cultiva- 
tor Waterloo, they say, was made fat in this way, by that dar- 
ling system of Kings and Clergy. They rained blood on that 
field and the plaster of Paris they spread on for manure was 
the bleached and powdered bones of the soldiery. But I am 
digressing, as friend Palmer of the Courier almost wittily said of 
the Herald, the other day. 



SPRING. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of May 19, 1843.] 
At last it is here in full flush. Winter held on tenaciously 
and mercilessly, but it has let go. The great sun is high on his 
northern journey, and the vegetation, and the bird-singing, and 
the loud frog-chorus, the tree budding and blowmg are all upon 
us-and the glorious grass-^superbest of earth's garniture-with 
Us ever-satisfying green. The king birds have come, and the 
corn planter-the scolding Bob-a-lmk. " Plant your corn, plant 
vour corn," says he, as he scvrreys athwart the ploughed ground 
hardly lifting his crank wings to a level with his back so self- 
.mportant is he in his admonitions. The earlier hirds have gone 
to house-keeping, and have disappeared from the spray There 
has been brief period for them, this sprmg, for scarcely has the 
deep snow gone, but the dark green grass has come, and first we 
shall know, the ground will be yellow with dandelions 

I incline to thank Heaven, this glorious mornmg of May Ibth, 
for the pleasant home from which we can greet the spring Hith- 
erto we have had to await it amid a thicket of village houses- 
low down, close together, and awfully white. For a prospect wc 
had the hinder part of an ugly meeting-house— which an enter- 
prising neighbor relieved us of, by planting a dwelling-house right 
before our eves-(on his own land, and he had a right to,) which 



260 SPRING. 

relieved us also of all prospect whatever. And the revival spirit 
of habitation which has come over Concord, is clapping up a 
house between every two in the already crowded town ; and the 
prospect is, it will be soon all buildings. They are constructing 
in quite good taste though — small, trim, cottage like. But I rath- 
er be where I can breathe air, and see beyond my own features, 
than be smothered among the prettiest houses ever built. We 
are on the slope of a hill — it is all sand, be sure, on all four sides 
of us, but the air is free (and the sand too, at times) and our 
water is a caution to tee-totallers. There is danger of hard drink- 
ing to live by it. Air and water, the two necessaries of life, and 
high, free play ground for the small ones. There is a sand pre- 
cipice hard by, high enough, were it only rock and overlooked 
the ocean, to be as sublime as any of the Nahant cliffs. As it is, 
it is altogether a safer haunt for daring childhood, which could 
hardly break its neck by a descent of some hundreds of feet. 

A low flat lies between us and the town, with its State house, 
and body guard of well-proportioned steeples standing round. It 
was marshy and wet, but is almost all redeemed by the translation 
into it of the high hills of sand. It must have been a terrible 
place for frogs, judging from what remains of it. Bits of water 
from the springs hard by, lay here and there about the low ground, 
which are peopled as full of singers as ever the gallery of the old 
North Meeting-house was, and quite as melodious ones. Such 
performers I never heard, in marsh or pool. They are not the 
great, stagnant, bull paddocks — fat and coarse-noted like Archi- 
bald Burgess, but clear water frogs, green, lively and sweet voiced. 
I passed their orchestra going home the other evening, with a 
small lad, and they were at it — all parts — ten thousand peeps, 
shrill, ear-piercing and incessant, coming up from every quarter, 
accompanied by a second, from some larger swimmer with his 
trombone — and broken in upon, every now and then, but not dis- 
cordantly, with the loud, quick hollfr, that resembles the cry of the 
tree toad. " There are the Hutchinsons," cried the lad. " The 
Rainers," responded I, — glad to remember enough of my ancient 
Latin to know that Rana or some such sounding word, stood for 
frog. But it was a " band of music," as the Miller friends say. 



THE STULTIFYING POWER OF SUPERSTITION. 0(jx 

Like other singers (all but the Hutchinsons) these are apt to sing 
too much — all the time they are awake — constituting really too 
much of a good thing. I have wondered if the little reptiles 
were singing in concert, or whether every one peeped on his own 
hook, their neighborhood only making it a chorus. I incline to 
the opinion that they are performing together — that they know 
the tune and each carries his part — self-selected, in free meeting, 
and therefore never discordant. The hour rule of Congress might 
be useful — though far less needed among the frogs, than among 
the profane croakers of the fens at Washington. 

They will soon disappear — the people are a building, they will 
soon turn every frog-stand into a human habitation, and hide 
every square yard of surface with a tenement, huilt to let. I wish 
the owners would build to live in, and that every poor tenant 
might turn owner. I hate to see a whole village rented out, with 
nobody at home. But success to the little town — they are as 
busy as bees, and the noise of the carpenter's hammer, and the 
clink of the stone cutter are as universal as the frog-peeps. I 
can't imagine where so many people are coming from, or what 
they are coming to. I am entirely unacquainted with the con- 
dition of the business world. But I hope they will all have some- 
thing to eat, and something honest and useful to earn it at. If 
they should not, there will be a sorry congregation of the poor 
people here, by and by. They will be in as bad a box as a pond 
of frogs with the water drained off, or dried up, or superseded by 
the sand of the house builders. Temperance and industry will 
get a living almost any v.-here, though I would rather get it in 
country, than in thick-settled town. 



THE STULTIFYING POWER OF SUPERSTITION. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 15, 1843.] 

It robs humanity of the light of intellect, as well as of all 
moral principle — and all moral sensibility and scrupulousness. I 
was much struck with an incidental developement of this in Dan- 



262 THE STULTIFYING POWER OF SUPERSTITION. 

iel O'Connell. I am reminded of it now by seeing him called a 
" bigoted Roman Catholic," in i\masa Walker's letter. It was 
at a dinner table in London. I was dining with Joseph and 
Elizabeth Pease. Late during dinner, O'Connell was announced. 
He came in wide awake, with all his splendid nature in full ani- 
mation and play. It was parliament time — and anniversary time 
at the World's Capital, and O'Connell had a prominent part to 
perform at every philanthropic meeting held in the old city — as 
well as being not an entirely idle spectator in the House of Com- 
mons. He sat down to the table directly opposite to me, across 
it. It was the first opportunity I had had of seeing the Great 
Agitator in private, and I did not abate all the observation I 
could decently take of his masterly countenance. It was all of 
a light flame of intellect and genius, when he took his seat, and 
cast his regard about on all at the small table. He was scarcely 
seated, when I observed his fine face part with its entire expres- 
sion, and become an idiotic blank — as unmeaning as the visage 
of a great calf. It was so sudden and so extreme and so hide- 
ous, that it amazed me. He was at his holy Catholic devotions be- 
fore meat. The corners of his beautiful and eloquent mouth were 
wofully and idiotically drawn down — that eye, whose flash ani- 
mates Ireland, and " whose bend doth awe the" Wellingtons and 
the Broughams of England — had not only " lost its lustre," but 
put on an expression of positive insignificancy, as much surpass- 
ing the competency of common eyes to " signify nothing," as 
its ordinary brilliancy exceeds that of every-day men. He 
crossed his broad and desolate forehead, with a most unmeaning 
finger, and then letting it down, of its own unwitting weight, he 
made another r^ on his great breast. There was not a man in 
the United Kingdom, I don't believe, who could have looked 
like such an infinite fool. It was but an instant, and the idiotic 
fog went off, and all that was O'Connell emerged again at once. 
It amazed and confounded me. It was Catholic monkery, and I 
could therefore look upon it with Protestant intrepidity. I could 
behold it as it was — and I never shall forget it. I never before 
had a consciousness of the blasting power of Superstition over 



POLITICS. 263 



Human Nature. I here beheld it in the extremity of its poten- 
cy. It had transformed Daniel O'Connell, in a single instant, 
into something vastly more than a natural fool. 



POLITICS. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Dec. 15, 1813] 

Our people seem to think it is the chief end of man. If our 
gods could be sculptured out, or depicted in any way, and given 
name and form — some queer-looking one would have to be drawn 
representing the Divinity of Politics. They would have to pic- 
ture an armed rogue — and yet he is one of our crack deities. He 
would rank almost as our Jupiter. Mammon would be a rival 
with him for the precedency of worship, — but along about elec- 
tions, the money god would have to stand round for a day or two. 

Every thing runs into politics. — It gives such a chance to fight, 
and show power. They have dragged the poor old Tempertince 
enterprise and the Anti-slavery cause to the ballot box — and tried 
to make them enlist in the squabble of elections. 

The Temperance movement they may swamp there, if they 
will, but not the Anti-slavery, so far as 1 can hinder it. And 
there is a band of moral abolitionists, who will keep up the anti- 
slavery front in the field of truth, and not suffer it to be identi- 
fied or confounded with this physico-moral, this pacifico-military 
demonstration, into which new-organization attempted to betray 
the cause in New England, and into which it has casually fallen, 
to some extent, in other parts of the country. Politics would be 
Anti-slavery's death. Third Party would figure under its ban- 
ner, till it might become numerous enough to attract the cupidity 
and the purchase of one of the other two great gambler parties, 
who alone can maintain a perpetual play in the country. There 
it would be absorbed, and there's an end of your anti-slavery. It 
would compromise on very low terms with any party that would 
reward its leaders with official power. Politics is gaming, and 
whoever will dabble in it attains the morality of a gambler. All 



2(54 POLITICS. 

gamblers phiy for the winning — and Third Party will go the way 
of First Party and Second. The only object of Party is Power. 
To get it or to preserve it, is its only possible motive. Any thing 
that would bring power, or perpetuate it, is always unhesitatingly 
and unscrupulously resorted to, — and any thing that would hazard 
it, shunned, with instinctive dread and avoidance. Third Party 
can be indifferent honest, only while it remains too feeble to be 
contemptible — when it shall have attained numbers to make it an 
object of continued scorn with the two rivals — or a little onward, 
when it rises to the dignity of being odious — it will be sucked 
up at once. Three Political Parties can't live. It is impossible. 
So soon as Third Party gets big enough to begin to pass muster, 
or to attract inspection, it will be devoured by the great political 
Anaconda, quicker than ever a famished Boa swallowed a rabbit. 
Then where is Anti-slavery — swallowed — with Third Party. 

Let, then, all abolitionists redouble their anti-slavery, moral 
energy. We must keep the country in a state of alarm for its 
pro-slavery institutions, until slavery is abolished. Instead of 
vainly endeavoring to avail ourselves of these blood-stained, soul- 
fettering institutions as instrumentalities, which would absorb 
our movement instead of aiding it — we must lay the moral battle- 
axe at the root of every one of them that is hostile to human 
rights, or that is interested to oppose our free movement. Instead 
of defending ourselves when they abuse us, let us throw away 
the shield, and rush upon their citadels. Let them do the de- 
fending. We have nothing to defend — our sole business is at- 
tack, and consequently we have no use for defensive weapons or 
armor. 

A " Liberty Party" Convention is called in this State, I see 
by the People's Advocate. I would have abolitionists beware of 
involving themselves in it. As politicians they can choose be- 
tween Third and the other parties, — but not safely, as abolition- 
ists, as it seems to me. I don't ask of any politicians to quit one 
party for another. I ask all abolitionists, and especially Third 
Party men (nominally) to quit their parties entirely, and quit poli- 
tics entirely. I would quit it, as I would drinking, or smoking, 
or chetving, or any other immoral practices. I would quit the 



POLITICS 2(}5 

ballot box, as I would the militia. It is as immoral to vote or be 
voted for, for political office, as to train or enlist in the army. 
Why not? What is the diiference ? There is a physical differ- 
ence between training on muster day, on parade — and marching 
to storm a town, or attack a troop in battle. But what difference 
in the character of the two movements 1 One is a training for 
the other. The spirit of them is the same. So political action 
is of one spirit and intent with military. The weapons of both 
are violence, and the instrumentalities of both, bloodshed and 
murder. 

What is the government, after which all political action is aim- 
ing, but an armed battery 1 What is its voice, but the report of 
cannon — its sanctions, but the bayonet and the halter ? Let them 
have their governments, and their armies, and navies, — out of the 
anti-slavery field — but not in it. I have nothing to say here 
against government and politics generally, as immoralities, — or 
with special intent to have them done away as institutions aside 
from our movement. They are immoralities, and therefore not 
to our anti-slavery purpose. It is immoral to strike a man, or 
threaten him, or to ask the sheriff to do it for you^or the militia 
officer, or the governor as such — or the penal law-maker — or the 
voter. Moral action is addressed to the moral qualities of a 
moral being — and does not act physically on the body and animal 
senses. There is nothing reformatory in animal action. The 
very beasts are injured by this political sort of corrective and re- 
form. 

Good farmers are learning that there is a better way to treat 
their cattle than by blows. The hostler of intelligence and kind- 
ness, is ceasing to maul his noble horse. They are leaving off 
the practice of breaking steers and colts — for the reason that it 
is cruel — undeserved by the brute, and unworthy the employer, 
and because a inholc horse or ox, is better than a broken one. 
Political action is unfit even for brute animals. Is it fitter for 
man ? Is humanity less susceptible of moral influences than 
what we call brutality 1 A politician is but a man driver, a hu- 
man teamster. His business is to control men by the whip and 
the goad. His occupation would be unlawful and inexpedient 



266 SHAKESPEARE GALLERY. 



toward even the cattle. I saw a book in Ireland entitled " The 
Rights of Animals." The title alone was worth more than most 
books. It suggested a grand idea — that animals had rights, and 
were not to be the victims of arbitrary caprice. Have mankind 
any rights ? Will those ballot-box haunters respect those rights, 
or will they vote them down 1 They can't get the power, these 
Third Party people — they can't rationally expect it. They may 
amuse themselves in organizing, and fussing and struo-CTlinff for 
it — esteeming themselves of little consequence as men, they may 
strive to make themselves of some, as voters. There they can 
count, as the constituents of an office-holder — or rather of a can- 
didate — for they can't get office. The political Evil Genius would 
cheat them out of their party, by a compromise, long before he 
would allow them to approach within reach of power. But while 
they are amusing themselves with this fictitious effijrt after it, — this 
mimic politics, — this boy's training — for it all amounts to this, 
and no more — while they are at this, they lose all relish for hio-h 
moral enterprise. They will run all to sham politics, and when 
that evaporates, they will disappear. Whereas moral anti-slavery is 
immortal — and immortalizing to the .si)irit. It cannot be cheated 
by compromise — or wearied out or baflled. It rises the fresher 
from every conflict — invigorated by its own exertion. It contin- 
ually rises and broadens in aim and instrumentality, and life's 
evils and mischiefs must give way before it. 



"SHAKESPEARE GALLERY." 

[From the Herald of Freedom of April 10, ISW.] 

I MUST try to keep open a little department for the accommoda- 
tion of the weekly-coming Nos. of our Bard. It is contemplated 
there will be a hundred of them, — if so, it would warrant quite 
a permanent establislmient. I once had a bit of scholar craft, 
that I might have laid out here to some advantage, — and a mod- 
erate eye to notice, and hand to note down the beauties both of 
text and illustration, as they are here displayed. And once, had 



"SHAKESPEARE GALLERY." 267 

I attempted it, in some pitiful sectarian, or party, or literary sheet, 
I should have stood a chance to get quoted into the periodicals 
round, and credit given, openly, and my sheet subscribed for. 
But now, why, if I could paint here with Shakespeare's own 
pencil, not a vassal press of them all would dare borrow it, and 
own where they got it, — or scarcely steal it, for fear of detection. 
Not detection by the owner, but the party or sect — their owners. 
Who dares quote from the Herald of Freedom ? Who dares in- 
sert the gallant name over an extract in their cowering sheets, 
and let their owners or overseers discover it — even though the 
article were vital enough to rescue the whole periodical from 
oblivion? But I cannot blame them. They are dependents. 
They " must live," as Burns said by the mouse. And to quote 
the Herald of Freedom, or Liberator, would no more allow them 
to have bread, than editing one of them, affords it to me. It is 
getting to be safe and tolerably common to copy from the National 
Standard. " Mrs. Child" has been quoted, a considerable while, 
and was while she edited the Standard, — not as the " Anti-Slave- 
ry Standard," but as " Mrs. Child." It was theft, thus to borrow 
without liberty. They wouldn't have dared treat any other press 
than the anti-slavery, so. They trifle with us, as they do with the 
poor colored people. But they v/on't always. The wheel is turning. 

The 3d No. of Shakespeare has arrived. It goes on with 
Hamlet, beginning with last of Act III. Its first cut, the " Palace 
of Rosenberg," with its steepled towers threatening the sky. Oh 
how inhospitable, how pitiless, how unlike welcome, or shelter, 
or home, these palace towers, and all turrets look. Minarets, 
they are sometimes called. Is there a Latin word that means 
threaten, that it can have sprung from? They threaten human- 
ity, as well as heaven — these minarets and steeples. Woods 
gloom around this " Rosenberg," — a Kingly fountain plays in its 
front, — couchant monsters 1; y on pedestals each side its entrance, 
to bid welcome the way-farer. Haughty ones, but not happy, are 
seen lounging in its parks. 

Page following, a tragedy-looking arm is depicted, thrusting a 
rapier at some unseen " rat" " behind the arras," — the hand of 
the left arm visible, as if clutching somewhere to give purchase 



268 "SHAKESPEARE GALLERY.' 

to the thrust. A designhig this, poor Polonius had an interest in. 
Or, closer looking, is it some dragon hands, squeezing out poison 
on to the point of Laertes' rapier 1 

On farther, a pile of the old Danish panoply, with the ravened 
ensign, that used to frighten Britain in the days of her Seven 
Kings, or thereabouts. The Raven not very strikingly pictured. 
They made handsomer battle-axes in them days, than standards. 

On farther — " a plain in Denmark" — covered with advancing 
forces — a proud-looking old host — Norwegians, it seems, going 
with an army of mighty "mass and charge ' to take a "patch" 
of Poland, that would neither rent nor sell for " five ducats," as 
the poor captain confesses, who leads the march. Hamlet says, 
" Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats will not" pay 
the cost of it. A sample of the cost and the occasion of general 
wars. A fleet in the cloudy distance, on the Baltic. 

A little way on, — and "poor Ophelia," — her pomp and lady- 
ship all abjured and gone, along with her wits, — and she in pea- 
sant garb and attitude, asking maniac questions at some stranger, 
I take it to be, gaping, curiously, out at a window. She, poor gal, 
is singing love-songs, along. A sad transform. Though I hardly 
know which is the most undesirable pickle to be in, this, or the 
peacock one she was born and bred to. 

The next pictorial — the sailors handing Hamlet's letter to Ho- 
ratio. The poor fellow, who delivers it, is hoisting one foot, and 
scratching his pate, in deprecation of the impatience of the gentle- 
man he is interrupting by handing him a letter. Poor vassal tar, 
he thinks he is highly favored by being allowed to deliver it, and 
live. Horatio looks with all the hateful self-importance of a 
second-hand aristocrat, — a dependent gentleman, in presence of 
his inferiors. Nobody looks down with so ineffable an eye, as 
they tiiat have to look up part of the time. Your king can afford 
to look on the serf with quite mitigated scorn. Indeed, he would 
hardly frown on him, more than on a dog. Horatio, I suppose, 
was a kind of toad-eater to Lord Hamlet, and therefore he would 
scowl at the intrusion of a sailor. The poor, dog tars look as 
their profession makes them feel, — but not quite so degraded and 
stupid as the servant that introduces them. 



"SHAKESPEARE GALLERY." 209 



The next a dark picture — the inky ocean and Denmark's ships 
hovering upon it, with out-spread, stormy-looking wings. The 
clouds look threatening and black, and the keels turning up at 
the prows like the ancient galley, make a picturesque and gallant 
show. These are the old Rovers, I suppose, that used to light 
down upon Saxon England, from the North sea. 

And next is Ophelia, drowning — where the willows let down 
their " hoar leaves in the glassy stream." " Her clothes spread 
wide — bearing her up" — her crazy wild flowers, all " her weedy 
trophies," scattered on the brook, and she, in maniac indifferency 
to her danger, garlanding her poor head, and chanting bits of old 
psalm tunes — a touching sight. 

The next one is the cut of cuts — as it is the scene of scenes, 
the grave diggers ! An old tree top over head — like the main 
arm of one of the old Connecticut river Elms, a century and a 
half old — tree-limbs to the very wooden life. Under it stands an 
ancient cross, that the old Northern superstition had posted there 
in the church yard, in behalf of the " dead and turned to clay." 
At its foot, the Two Clowns, one with " a pick axe," and the other 
with " a spade." They are discussing " Crowner's 'quest-Law." 
One is the old Sexton, by his look. He settles the legality of 
Ophelia's burial. His younger fellow-digger looks for all the 
world as if he was asking if " that was Law !" Stupid as his 
pick-axe, his cod's eye within an inch of smiling, at the delightful 
legal intelligence he is getting. While old Coke sits, hands 
clasped on his shovel handle, and looking with all the sage satis- 
faction of an old counsellor, who cares as little as he knows what 
his opinion is good for, so long as it goes for law with his poor 
hearer. They are looking one another most intelligently in the 
face. The inquiring clown — the law-pupil, is lifting one hand 
almost into a gesture. Clowns ! See to what. Society can reduce 
that "piece of work," this same Shakespeare elsewhere calls 
" man." It doesn't look much " like a god, in action" — or "an 
angel, in apprehension," here. On the opposite page an impo- 
sing old church. These old cathedrals ! — it is they, have made 
" man" into " clowns." 

On the next page, a left hand emerges from a partly dug grave, 
23* 



270 GORGEOUS SKETCH OF O'CONNELL 

a clown's hand palpably, wielding a spade which is turning out 
a skull. A wonderfully expressive little cut. It is the skull of 
Yorick — " three and twenty years i' the earth," and now again 
visiting the air and light, but not to jest for the entertainment of 
kings. The king he used to entertain, had himself gone to cnta'- 
tain other jesters and digesters — even " my lady worms." 

On another page a picture of Yorick, capering like a fool, as 
he was, with young Hamlet on his back, who looks like an already 
spoiled child. Another picture — and a kingly apartment, and 
humanity around a table, in all degrees of debasement — its two 
debasing extremes, the jester and the king — the jester performing, 
and the miserable king laughing most royally and majestically, — 
Ijoth most apparent " fools." Obsequious courtiery is sitting by, 
tickled to death, of course, in obedience to his tasteful Majesty, 
and his Majesty's wit, as displayed by his Majesty's jester. 

This ends the pictorial of the No. A long notice of it — but 
not long in the scratching. 



GORGEOUS SKETCH OF O'CONNELL, AND THE TARA 
MEETING. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of May 17, 1844.] 

The friends of humanity — readers of the Herald of Freedom — 
will take interest in movements any where in the world, in behalf 
of poor, down-trampled, subjected human kind. The agitations 
of O'Connell are for a comparatively low object. It is not much 
for poor Ireland, to be transferred from an Imperial to a Provin- 
cial Parliament. To be ruled on the banks of the subject LifTey, 
instead of on the banks of haughty, riley old Thames. To be 
devoured by a domestic Locustry, instead of one that lights down 
upon the other side of the St. George's channel, and there sucks 
her thin blood through a tube, a little protracted. Her veins will 
be exhausted in either event, and Government will drain them 
dry. O'Connell doesn't demand seZf-government for the Irish 
people. He doesn't deem them capable of it, or himself capable 
of it. He does not aspire to freedom, himself. He is a contented 



AND THE TARA MEETING. 271 



subject. He acknowledges allegiance to his Q,ueen, and doesn't 
feel dishonored by the subjection and vassalage it implies. But 
he is struggling upward. He is making advances. He is learn- 
ing there is something of more potency than powder and steel. 
He has armed his millions with weapons that are an overmatcli 
for Wellington's Bayonets, which could disper.se the whirlwind 
onset of Napoleon's Guards — even with their unarmed and de- 
fenceless hands. The hard hands of Irish Labor — with nothing 
in them — they ring them like slabs of marble together, in response 
to the wild appeals of O'Connell, on the hills of their country — 
and the British troops stand conquered before them, with shoul- 
dered arms. Ireland is on her feet tcith nothing in her hands, 
impregnable and unassailable in her utter defencelessness. The 
first time a nation ever sprung to its feet, unarmed. They have 
no defensive weapons, and they are secure from attack. The 
veterans of England behold them, and forbear to fire. They see 
no mark. It v/on't do to fire upon men. It will do to fire only 
on soldiers. They are the proper mark for the murderous gun. 
Men cannot be fired at. O'Coimell, by circumstances, has found 
it out, and is taking advantage of it. He will learn, by and by, 
that if there wasn't a musket in Ireland, no Red-coat would dare 
cross her channel. It would be a grander purgation for the Em- 
erald Isle, than St. Patrick's, which rid it of the serpents. If all 
Ireland would make proclamation, banishing from their green 
borders forever, all instruments of death, and avowing eternal 
peace and good will to man, England \vould cry, conquered and 
beat ! to all the world ; and would withdraw and disband her le- 
gions. They would disband, of themselves, on the spot, and turn 
Irishmen, and throw their hateful-looking war trappings into the 
ocean, and learn the direful trade no more. It is coming to that, 
the world over, and when it does come to it, oh what a long breath 
of relief and of rest will the tired world draw, as it stretches itself, 
for the first time, out upon earth's green-sward, and learns the 
meaning of repose and peaceful sleep. 

But this is not the mere introduction I sat down, at this inter- 
val of manual labor, to give to the French Viscount's account of 
the Tara meeting, on the Hill of Kings, and by the Stone of 
Destiny. It is from a paper fresh from Ireland. 



272 THE HUTCHINSONS. 



THE HUTCHTNSONS. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of June 14, 1844.] 

* * * One word more. The Hutchinsons. No one will 
any longer tax me with hyperbole or exaggeration — when I exult 
at these matchless Anti-Slavery songsters. They surpassed them- 
selves at the Convention. They came out with some new strains, 
and sung some that were not entirely new with prodigious and 
indescribable effect. Ames says it takes an orator to describe 
an orator, — or write his life. I say it would take musicians and 
music to describe these singers. Their outburst at the Con- 
vention, in Jesse's celebrated " Get off the track," is absolutely 
indescribable in any words that can be penned. It represented the 
moral Rail Road in characters of living light and song, with all 
its terrible enginery and speed and danger. And when they came 
to that chorus-cry, that gives name to the song, — when they cried 
to the heedless pro-slavery multitude that were stupidly lingering 
on the track, and the Engine " Liberator" coming hard upon 
them, under full steam and all speed, — the Liberty Bell loud 
ringing, and they standing like deaf men right in its whirlwind 
path, — the way they cried " Get off the track," in defiance of all 
time and rule, was magnificent and sublime. They forgot their 
harmony, and shouted one after another, or all in confused outcry, 
like an alarmed multitude of spectators, about to witness a ter- 
rible rail road catastrophe. But I am trying to describe it. I 
should only say it was indescribable. It was life — it was nature, 
transcending the musical staff — and the gamut, the minim and 
the semi-breve, and ledger lines. It was the cry of the people, 
into which their over-wrought and illimitable music had dcgen- 
frotctl, — and it was glorious to witness them alighting down again 
from their wild flight "into the current of song, — like so many 
swans upon the river from which they had soared, a moment, 
wildly into the air The multitude who heard them will bear me 
witness, that they transcended the very province of mere music, — 
which is, after all, like eloquence, or like poetry, — but one of the 
subordinate departments of humanity. It was exaggerated, sub- 



THE HUTCHINSONS. 273 

liinated — transcendent song. God be thanked the Hutchinsons 
are in the Anti-Slavery movement — for their sakes as well as for 
ours. Their music would ruin them, but for the chastening influ- 
ences of our glorious enterprise. It will now inspire all their 
genius and give it full play, — and will guard them from the se- 
ductions of the flattering world, which, but for its protections, 
would make them a prey. I note them, not to praise them. I 
am above that, — as they are. I do it in exultation for the Cause, 
and for their admonition , though while they are abolitionists, they 
do not need it. Anti-Slavery is a safe regulator of the strongest 
genius. I here take occasion to say, in defiance of all rule, that 
Jesse Hutchinson, Junior, is the most gifted song writer of the 
times — so far as I know. None of our most approved poetry 
comes up to his — written in the hurly of the anti-slavery debate. 
It is perhaps owing to this and to the fact that he writes to sing 
rather than to read — writes under the influence of song — that 
the music precedes the poetry in his mind — that the words come 
at the call of the music, and are drafted into its service — or rather 
volunteer at its summons, — that his poetry sings so much better 
than Pierpont's, or Burleigh's, or Lowell's, or Whittier's — or any 
of the bards. Burns wrote his immortal songs to match the tunes 
sent him by George Thompson. He couldn't sing, like Jesse 
Hutchinson. I don't know as he could at all. His soul could, 
if his voice couldn't, — and under its inspiration he poured forth 
his lays, in songster verse. What songs he would have left us, if 
he could have written under such a spell of music as possesses 
the Hutchinsons ! Jesse's songs remind me of him. " The Slave 
Mother" is hardly surpassed in simplicity and pathos by any 
thing of Burns. I only mention it to call the attention of the 
people to what is going on in the Anti-Slavery field. They'll all 
miss it, if they don't come there. 



274 "THE TIGERS. 



" THE TIGERS." 
[From the Herald of Freedom of July 26, 1844.] 

This is the picturesque and appropriate name of a corps of 
young aristocrats of Boston, who have embodied themselves in 
behalf of our Religion and Law. " The Tigers !" They are a 
military company, a portion of the " sure defence of the State." 
And to be sure they are its " sure defence," and only defence. 
It is a tiger institution — this State — and must have tigerish de- 
fence. And its ally and sister, the Church, is a tigress. I called 
the Church the State's sister. She is nearer akin than that. She 
is the bride — the State's wife. Or, rather, the State's mistress, 
it being forbidden by " our institutions," that Church and State 
intermarry. She is the State's paramour. It differs from the 
alliance carried on over the water, in that it is illicit here, and not 
confessed. Well, the defence of these intimates is the militia — 
or the armed and accoutred tigerism of the land. 

The " Boston Tigers" have recently sallied out from their 
jungle, on a scout to the cities of New York and Baltimore. 
The papers are quite animated in announcing it. The great 
Boston presses advertise, with immense eagerness and emulation, 
this sally of their city " Tigers" — and speak very eloquently and 
graphically of their tooth and claw equipment, and their striped 
Bengal uniform. One would think from their tone, that Boston 
was one great menagerie — or an African or Indian desert, with 
hyenas and pards for editors. Their editors are, some of them, 
half hyena, and it is with quite a fellow feeling, that they an- 
nounce these sallies of " The Tigers." I am sorry to see friend 
Buckingham, of the Courier, so Hyrcanean as to advertise " The 
Tigers." I understand "The Boston Tigers" had a chaplain go 
out with them. Of course, they would have a chaplain. I am 
told the Reverend Mr. Lothrop, of the Unitarian Church, served 
on this expedition. A chaplain to tigers ! And why not tigers 
have chaplains, as well as 74's 1 Parker Pillsbury, sometimes, 
in his speeches, guesses the Cuba -Blood Hound Regiment had 
them. And why shouldn't a regiment of tigers ? There is noth- 



"MUSTER." 



ing incompatible in it. A chaplain is carniverous — and is natu- 
rally armed like such a regiment. Indeed, I know no troops so 
adapted to a chaplaincy, — or so congenial, or so in need of one, 
as a troop of Bengal Tigers, or a brigade of slavery-trained Blood 
Hounds, from christian Cuba. 

These " Boston Tigers" — by the way, are a pretty bevy to let 
loose upon the southern cities and the intermediate villages and 
hamlets. They will want prey on the road, and after they get 
there. They will not be content with ihe pray of their chaplain, 
duery, what is the uniform of chaplain to a troop of tigers ? The 
livery of the Prince of Peace, trimmed with leopard-skin ? There 
is excellent military meaning in this name of "Tigers." By 
the bye, again I wonder if the Royal Bengal Tiger has his pri- 
vate chaplain — his " chaplain in ordinary." But this is all injidel 
speculation — and invidious attacking of our civil and religious 
institutions. 

" The Tigers" is only a spirited and gallant name for a band 
of patriotic young Bostonians, who have armed for the defence 
of the country, and are out for seasoning and discipline. They 
are not quadruped tigers, — but christian young " gentlemen of 
property and standing," (that is, not going on all-fours,) and only 
called " Tigers" by way of distinction and illustration 



« MUSTER." 
[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 27, 1844.] 

This relic of feudal barbarism is still kept up among us, al- 
though it is getting along toward the very middle of the 19th cen- 
tury — much talked of as a period of light and learning, and what 
not. Our people still continue the annual, or oftener custom of 
tricking themselves out in a kind of savage finery, and marching 
about in the dirt, brandishing mischievous instruments in their 
hands, or carrying them on their shoulders. They have the idea 
it is somehow necessary to their liberty and safety. 

They have had an instance of this barbarism this week, in this 



276 "MUSTER." 



place. They call it " General Muster" — and it is pretty general, 
quite too general, for the credit of a really pretty sensible and 
civilized people. The people of Concord — to say nothing of 
towns about, who were, I suppose, engaged in it — do know bet- 
ter. I know they are under the benighting influence of State 
House and Pulpit, — both of which inculcate the divinity of gen- 
eral muster, but then they know better, — for there is a light of 
the age dawning, and they must see and know the folly and the 
evil of such things as this rummy and ridiculous " muster." I am 
sorry they have not felt themselves ready to protest suitably against 
it. If they vi^ould — the people of this capital town alone, — the 
General Court would, I doubt not, repeal, at least, the law obliging 
the people to play the antics of " muster." But it is one of those 
things that people, generally, dislike to move in first, — and first 
moving in it (as in every other reform,) is left to the fanaticism. 
The judicious go on in the foolery till the fanatics make it gen- 
erally ridiculous or infamous, and then it becomes jtidicious to 
leave it off. So it will be with this prank of " muster." 

I was approaching the Main Street of the village — from my 
suburb residence — the morning of the solemn occasion, and I 
could perceive something ailed the people I met on the way. 
There was a sort of " great training" eagerness in their look, and 
hurry in their step. I don't know but I walked a little quicker 
than common, myself, as I drew nigh and beheld the current of 
the day setting up street towards " the ground." I knew it was 
training day, for 1 had heard a cannon or two fired oflf about sun- 
rise, — and now and then a drum tap or tjie squeal of a fife in the 
course of the morning. It was ludicrous, — as well as melancholy, 
to stand and see the poor human multitude trudge by in the dust. 
Concord Main Street is never lacking for dust — but now there 
had been a long drought, so severe as almost to amount to an 
omen for our Advent friends, who are looking again for confla- 
gration, — and the dust they kicked up as they drove and poured 
along, — man and beast, (if the distinction continues training day,) 
was " a caution," as well as a cloud. Poor codgers, on foot, old 
and young, evidently from s(>me distance, as their poor 'tother 
clothes bore dusty witness, — pulling on, like pilgrims to Holy 



" MUSTER." 277 



Land, as if it would be death to miss of getting there in season. 
Lots of pedlers — getting in late from neighboring musters the 
day before — hastening to get on to the ground to mingle in the 
auction chorus that swells up there so harmoniously with word of 
command and the voice of the chaplain ! By the way, I descried 
the chaplain of the day — friend Ryder, of the Universalist pulpit, 
hastening with animated step, towards " the place where prayer is 
wont to be made." I had just been told friend R. was to per- 
form — and was rather sorry, because his pulpit had lately been 
taking liberal ground toward the anti-slavery movement, — and 
Anti-Slavery has " no dealings" with the muster field. I rather 
friend R. had left the chaplaincy to Reverend Mr. Dow, of last 
year — or some other of the orthodoxy, to whose ranks friend Dow 
has recently been converted from Universalism. I think the penal 
faith of orthodo.xy is in better keeping than friend Ryder's, with 
sulphurous gunpowder and the other instrumentalities of muster 
field. 

But I saw him hastening to the field at real military rate. It 
occurred to me, I would like to go and witness his prayer, — and 
take one glance at the accompaniments. It might afford matter 
for a wholesome word in the " Herald of Freedom," and I hadn't 
for a long time witnessed such a thing as muster Devotions. I 
had learned moreover, — which I would mention for friend Ryder's 
credit, that on application from the commander of the Regiment 
to go and open the muster with prayer, — he declined, or hesitated, 
on the ground that he was not friendly to fighting, and that the 
Commander gave him to understand — if he would go, he should 
be at liberty to pray in his own way. It occurred to me, friend 
R. might make it in his way to pray a real christian prayer, (in 
sentiment, — for Christianity doesn't hold to praying at musters of 
any kind, ecclesiastical or military,) one that would blow muster 
and all other kind of fighting, up sky high. I was in hopes he 
would. Accordingly I resorted to the "tented field." The 
troopers were there, stretched out in line, — not very long, com- 
pared with the people, — and not the crowd of people that used to 
throng at a muster. I was thankful too, to see no women among 
them, the brief space I was in sight. There was movement and 
24 



07S "MUSTER." 



evolution among the troops — a gathering inwards, into a sort of 
conference shap^, which I soon perceived was a mancEuvering for 
prayer. I followed the multitude of people across the guarded 
lines, where paced the sentinels with trailed musket, to watch 
the borders of the field ! The people were permitted to overpass 
it — for it was to prayer ! We all huddled up close to the armed 
men. I was almost afraid the people would run on to them, — for 
they seemed to have no fear of trainers before their eyes. And 
the idea of prayer on such an occasion and under such circum- 
stances, seemed to strike all minds as more of a joke than any 
thing of sober earnest. I was very glad it did, — for if there is 
any thing of Christianity ever in these prayers, the incongruity of 
throwing them up from a muster field, is most monstrous. The 
Commanding officer looked rather serious — but it seemed more 
from anxiety to get through the manoeuvre right, than any care for 
the prayer. When he had got them all posted about, according 
to regimental guntor, and so they wouldn't be likely to run over 
friend Ryder, who was on foot — and who, I understood, abso- 
lutely refused to perform horse-back, — the Commander took off 
his cocked-up hat, and ordered " all heads uncovered for prayer." 
The troopers took otf their caps, but the people didn't, — a soul 
of them, that I saw, — so it was wholly a military affair. The 
Colonel intimated, in some way, — I believe it wasn't " word o' 
command" — to friend Ryder, that he might — or must — or could — 
or should — or would — I didn't catch the term — proceed. I didn't 
hear whether he said " lead in prayer" or not. But it amounted 
to a call for prayer, and friend R. took his position and began. 
I was really interested to hear what a man could say in such a 
predicament. I didn't see how he could say any thing. But 
friend R. did. He began by invoking the "God of our fathers," 
meaning, I suppose, the revolutionary — continental " fathers" — 
which was in military style enough, — but he went on to call Him 
''father" — and the armed and accoutred array around him. His 
''children" — and to treat the muster as a sort oi brotherly , fami- 
ly affair. He didn't pray for a bit of the spirit of '76 — nor for 
any thing that goes to make up or stir up the soldier. Said not 
a word to the " God of Battles," any more than if there hadn't 



MUSTER." 279 



been any such Deity presiding over mankind, to set them by the 
ears, — not a word for " grace" to nerve the arms of our troops 
and steel their hearts to look on blood and carnage without flinch- 
ing or winking, as stern old parson Burnham would have done, 
had he been there, — not a word, not even enough in the prayer 
for a 4th of July — so far as I remember. It treated mankind as 
brethren, and God as the father of us all — and wound up by ask- 
ing that in the end all should be received into peace and heaven 
together. He had hardly said " amen" — when the Colonel cried 
out, " shoulder arms !" and up went the guns and baganets — in 
quite a fraternal — brotherly, family way. I saw one officer on 
a horse trying to run his sword into its case — while friend R. was 
in the midst of his prayer. The sword looked like any thing but 
a family utensil. He didn't put it up with any reference to the 
prayer — or to there being a prayer going on. He seemed to put 
it up because he was tired of carrying it in his hand. A drum 
struck up, rub-a-dub-bing, a little way back among the trainers. 
The Colonel seemed to think the drum and prayer didn't keep 
time, and rode off and had it stopped. But the noise outside the 
I ines kept on through all the prayer, and the cry of the pedlers 
rose there high above it towards heaven, mingled with the snap- 
ping of crackers and all manner of training-day uproar. 

After all, it was as fitting an occasion of prayer — was it not — 
as friend Daniel Noyes' worship, fresh from a drag-out of Foster ! 
I saw no man look half so much like " actual service," on the 
muster field, as friend Stevens, the Secretary of State, when he 
laid hold of Foster, — or so much like giving the word " fire," or 
" push baganet !" as friend Daniel Noyes did, when he gave the 
signal for the drag-out. They went to prayer in friend Noyes' 
worship, right after it — and why not on the muster field amid 
guns and bayonets, canteens and cartridge boxes, which are all 
provided expressly to defend this very worship. 

After prayers, I understand (I didn't stay to attend it) they 
had a sham fight, among other exercises. One officer, I was told, 
made a speech to the men — in which he told them " war was ac- 
cording to the circumstances of the age — if it wasn't according 
to the spirit of the age" — which he seemed to regret — and dwelt 



3S0 AUTHORITY. 



much on the duty of soldiers to be brave and obedient, and on the 
value of discipline. 

Well — this is one of our religious institutions — this General 
Muster — as much so as the Gallows — the Pulpit — the Priesthood 
— Slavery, or any other of them. And really, it is becoming, 
now the people are seeing it in its true light, one of the least 
harmful of them all. 



AUTHORITY. 

From the Herald of Freedom of Dec. 4, 1844.] 

It is high time this old Incubus were in the sepulchre. It has 
long enough been the great bug-bear to frighten the spirit of Re- 
form — the giant scare-crow, looming by the road-side of human 
advancement. And it has long enough flapped its bat-looking 
wings in the eyes of the anti-slavery movement. It has stood 
across our path-way in every Protean variety of alarming shape. 
It has towered before us in the form of " Glorious Constitutions," 
and "Happy and inviolable Unions;" of "Compromises," and 
"Guarantees," and "Revolutionary Fathers." The creatures 
of slavery, all of them, in all that makes them important to the 
question. The people are getting accustomed to these sights, 
and can almost look these forms of authority steadily in the face. 
But Authority has showed itself in the more awful apparition of 
THE Church, with her dreadful array of Sabbaths and Sanctu- 
aries and Sacraments and Priesthood. With these she has reared 
herself up across our anti-slavery path, and with hollow admoni- 
tions warned us to go back. Her Priesthood have had a Book, 
now getting into the hands of the people under the requirements 
of the age — out of which they read the warrant of man to enslave 
his brother, and God's express command as well as permission 
for the damnable deed. The Book was handed down from God 
out of a cloud, on some mountain top half hid in thunder — to 
some one of " the world's gray fathers" — and so far back in time, 
that the age itself when it occurred, has become clothed with a 



AUTHORITY. 281 



kind of prescriptive divinity. Religion pictures the awful tra- 
dition — even at this period of the world — respecting the half-seen 
hand of the Almighty, as the hand of a man, reaching down the 
terrible trust out of a black cloud, to the implicit and awe-struck 
receiver, who is honored as the messenger of God to the trem- 
bling race. With such pictures as this, does doctorated and 
learned divinity play upon the apprehensions of the people, and 
mould their worship. The Book is at length in the hands of the 
People — but not to be read. They may open it and perform out 
of it their religious services — but it can be read by the priests 
alone. For an ordained and learned Priesthood are held neces- 
sary to the interpretation of the Book to the people, and to their 
being instructed in its doctrines. The people can read — and the 
Bible is amply in their hands. Yet it abates not at all the neces- 
sity of an interpreting Priesthood. Two-and-twenty thousand 
Clergy at least, are ordained over this land, to open the Book, 
and declare to the staring people the interpretation thereof. Set 

apart by one another, they are, for the expounding of the 

Scriptures, and the unveiling of so much of their mysteries, as 
the eye of the age can bear and live. True, the mass of these 
interpreters are at mortal odds with each other, and the Church, 
under their infallible guidance, is wandering in hostile sects. But 
the Book is the standard, and the infallible authority of God, and 
his revealed will to man. 

The Priest reads out of it that man may enslave and butcher 
his brother — and the Church receives and inculcates his teach- 
ings — and the abolitionist or friend of peace who gainsays the 
frightful inculcation, is silenced by being branded as an infidel 
and fanatic. 

I do not stop here to vindicate the Bible from these imputations 
cast upon it by its worshippers. Nor to vindicate myself from 
the charge of infidelity, for demanding the immediate abolition 
of slavery, independently of authority, and in the face of author- 
ity, it may be. I deny the competency of Scripture, or of any 
other authority, to sanction slavery. Without disputing with the 
worshippers of the Book, whether or not it sustains these abomi- 
nations, I demand their abolition in the name of suffering and 
24* 



282 AUTHORITY. 



outraged humanity. If they meet me with a text, and say they 
got it from the word of God — I reply, I cannot inquire where 
you got it. I, of course, might say it could not be the word of 
God, from its very nature — and that whatever Book contained 
it, was not God's word. But I have a shorter, and I think, 
safer answer. It is, that my demand is right, and your defence is 
false — self-evidently and palpably. I cannot examine your text — 
for meanwhile humanity suffers in chains. My eye is on its de- 
liverance, and I cannot suffer it to be averted for a moment. It 
is more important that humanity be disenthralled, than that 
the Book should be vindicated — or its contents correctly as- 
certained. Abolish Slavery first, and examine your Book after- 
wards. If your Book, or its defenders, demur to this, I fear it is 
the enemy of human welfare. If it is friendly to liberty, it will 
not make its own claims paramount. Its friends would say, save 
humanity first — " how much more is a man, better than a" — 
book. I might quote abundance of anti-slavery passages from 
every page of the sacred authority — but I will not do it now. I 
deny now that it is an authority, however Anti-Slavery and how- 
ever true and glorious its contents may be. To be useful, it 
must address itself to human understanding — not as an authority 
to control the will, or move upon the feelings — but to undergo 
inquiry and satisfy the understanding. 

Is this right? May Anti-Slavery take this absolute ground ? Has 
the human mind the power of discerning the right — and is there 
any such thing in human economy as right and wrong? If there 
be, then it must be discernible by us — and not only so, but plain- 
ly and palpably discernible. The impartial eye cannot fail to 
discern it. And to be impartial is our absolute duty. We must 
be so, of our own, self-regulated motion. We must not wait to 
be moved to it. It must be our voluntary movement — made 
upon adequate reason. We are not at liberty to ask God to do 
our work, or to work transmutation in us, in order that we may 
become involuntarily willing to do it ourselves. The duty is 
ours — therefore the performance of it must be. We are com- 
petent to do it — or it is not duty. And to know it also. And 
when wc have done it, it is done, and not till then. So long 



AUTHORITY. 283 



as we do not do it, it remains undone — and perhaps we undone 
also. 

But if you deny the authority of scripture, you are an infidel. 
Perhaps I am, and perhaps I am not — but what then? What if 
I am ? Is it an answer to my truth, to make me out an infidel ? 
I claim to be an abolitionist. I demand the abolition of slave- 
ry — Bible or no Bible. I demand it, even if the Bible sanctions 
it. Am I right in demanding its abolition 1 That is the question 
for you to answer. Meet it upon its merits. I demand it of 
those who may never have seen the Bible, or heard of it. Let 
those who attach authority to the text, use it for the overthrow 
of slavery, as an argument. They may use it as an authority, if 
they can go no higher — if they cannot comprehend the power 
of truth, or the rights of the soul. But I demand for the slave- 
holder the right to ask a reason, when you call on him to let his 
brother go free. He is under no obligation to regard your au- 
thority. He is entitled to a reason. He has a reason, I grant — 
always in his own bosom, and is never without one — why he 
should instantly cease slaveholding. It is for that reason I ask 
him to do it — and denounce his refusal. 

Anti-Slavery has been attacked with the Bible — and it has en- 
deavored to defend itself with the same weapon. The attempt 
may have been successful, or it may not — but the attack has still 
been renewed. The pro-slavery text is still quoted, and all the 
counter quotation — and all the interpretation, and argument based 
upon it, have failed to oust the biblical slaveholder of his refuge. 
Grant him that his Bible is God's word — that all within its lids is 
inspiration and infallibility — that its writers, compilers and trans- 
lators were all infallible, so that you have now a revelation of the 
will and doctrines of God — and so long as he can find one out of 
the hundred texts he will quote you, he will take refuge under it, — 
and you cannot reach him. You do not touch his heart — for you 
have not appealed to it. You have appealed to his fears — and he 
can answer you by authority, which settles every thing in the eye 
of fear. You have not reached his convictions — for you have 
not allowed him any. Or if when you appealed to his heart — he 
replied by a text — you admitted the validity of his reply, by join- 



284 AUTHORITY. 



ing issue with him upon the text. Should you not have declined 
all consideration of his text, and held on upon his convictions of 
the intrinsic iniquity and wrong of slavery? 

I denounce slaveholding, because it is hurtful and degrading 
to man. Not because it is written that God hath made of one 
blood, <St.c. I do not care if there are twenty kinds of blood in 
the veins of mankind. It isn't a question of blood. It injures 
the negro to enslave him, and the white man to be his master. 
This can easily be shown and enforced, and cannot be gainsaid. 
But "Abraham held slaves." I care not if he did. "What 
Abraham did, was approved of God." I care not for that. Is it 
right for you now, to enslave a man ? Give me a single reason for it. 
Is it not inhuman and barbarous? No man can deny it. " But 
did not Paul send Onesimus back ?" If he did, I must send 
Paul back. That is all I can say to that. I will not go into that 
matter. " But you are an infidel." I will not go into that neither. 
" But I will call you so, and destroy your character with the 
people, and frighten them away from your enterprise." No doubt. 
But I will appeal to the people on the self-evident nature of slave- 
holding — and will tell the people that this is what the man defends 
who calls me infidel — that this is what he says his Book defends, 
and that he calls me infidel, for denying the competency of the 
Book to sustain a system like that. I will ask the people to 
abolish slavery and then to examine that Book and see what is its 
real character and claims to the consideration of mankind. And 
I need not say to them, after they have abolished slavery, that 
if they find the Book countenances it — or any other iniquity, 
they ought to spurn not its authority only — but its teachings and 
its spirit. Meanwhile, I let the Book stand on the shelf, and ad- 
dress myself to the overthrow of Slavery — on every principle that 
has power in the human breast. 



PROPERTY. 285 



PROPERTY. 
[From tlie Herald of Freedom of March 15, 18 14.] 

I HAZARD the opinion here, that mankind have got to abandon 
it, in practice and in idea, or they never can live peaceably or 
honestly. And what is more, they cannot have a living. There 
cannot be enough raised on the earth, under any conceivable de- 
gree of cultivation, to feed the race, and keep off starvation, on 
the property system. If the whole earth's surface were a garden, 
there couldn't be. Vast multitudes would have to starve to death, 
and nearly all the rest would live in fear of it — and the few who 
didn't feel apprehensive enough, of coming to want, to lead them 
to occupy their minds and cares almost constantly, through life, 
in getting a living, would run for relief from their lonely, rare, 
and strange condition, to suicide, in some of its forms. Proper- 
ty can't give mankind a living, " any way you can lix it." I 
throw out the idea. 

ANOTHER IDEA. 

Every human creature is entitled to the means of living — cz 
officio — from the fact that he is here on the earth. It won't do to 
starve an infant — or an idiot — or an old man past his labor — or 
any body else, who from deficiency or incapacity of any kind, 
can't get a living. If he is put here, or found here — if he is 
here, he is, ipso facto, {therefore) entitled to comfortable means. 
He is entitled to it — consequently — whether he earns it or not — 
for he is so when he cannot possibly earn it. It is not charity 
(unless of that kind they call good will — the kind friend Paul 
speaks of, where he puts it ahead of " hope and faith.") It isn't 
supplies furnished to a pauper. He is entitled to it — no thanks 
to any body. He is as much entitled to it — free and above-board 
— as a trout is to a brook, or a lark to the blue sky. He can eat 
and drink, as independently, as he can inhale the air, or see the 
light. Why not? If he can't, he better not be introduced here. 
Is it well to put a human " young one" here, to die of hunger, 
or thirst, or even of nakedness, or else be preserved as a pauper ' 
Is this fair earth but a poor house, by creation and intent 1 Was 



286 PROPERTY. 



it made for that — and were those other round things, we see 
dancing in the firmament to the " music of the spheres" — are 
they all great shiny Poor Houses, with chance of escape to the 
few upon their respective surfaces, who can manage to monopo- 
lize the wherewithal, and become the overseers of the poor, for 
their spheres 1 I don't believe pauperism is the natural condition 
of humanity. It is its inevitable, as well as actual condition, 
wherever the means of living are transmuted into " property," 
and held as such. The very fact of propertyizing the means of 
living — will turn mankind — or whatever kind — into paupers, and 
overseers of the poor. It cannot be avoided. One fair glance 
at human affairs, shows it has done it for the race, now. One 
retrospect, through the tube of history, discovers it so in all the 
past. And no expedient — no varied effort, no shifting of ma- 
chinery can make it result otherwise. Make air the subject of 
ownership — of exclusive property — and there isn't enough of it, 
in our forty-five mile stratum round the earth, for the lungs of ever 
so scanty a population — much less for the hundreds of millions 
now panting upon it. Make " property" of the sunshine, and 
nine tenths of the human race would have to grope in unintermitted 
darkness — and the other tenth have their eye-sight dazzled out by 
excess of light. Nobody could see by it. And there isn't water 
enough on the earth, fresh or salt, to give the population drink, 
if it were made " property." And they would have made it so, 
if they could have guarded it from common use. And so of the 
air and sunshine. This hateful, wolfish principle of appropria- 
tion wouldn't have left a breath of air, or a ray of light — free to 
the use of any soul on God's earth, if it could have possibly pre- 
vented it. But air and sunshine " won't stay" owned. They 
can't be appropriated. Ownership has laid hold of humanity it- 
self — and appropriated it, directly and confessedly — body and 
soul — but it can't grasp the subtle sunshine and the " nimble 
air," and /toZrfthem to self, " heirs, executors and administrators." 
If it could, it would, and we should see air sold out by the breath, 
and sunshine by the ray — for what they could be made to bring. 
And the mass of mankind wouldn't have a comfortable supply of 
either, and myriads would die for want of both. There would 



PROPERTY. og7 



be as abundant a supply of all the other means of living — neces- 
saries, comforts, elegancies — luxuries if you will — as there is now 
of air and sunshine and water, were they not made " property." 
That is, if there were good nature enough and good sense enough 
in exercise to leave them free. To appropriate them, is to 
appropriate human life. To make them " property" is to make 
life property. To make them subject of ownership, of accumu- 
lation, of loss, of theft, &c., is to make human life subject of all 
these. He takes my life, said Shakespeare, who takes the means 
whereby I live. I mention the authority, for people think some- 
thing of him. To appropriate the land and its products — spon- 
taneous or produced, is to inevitably debar mankind a living. I 
say, inevitably. Make these things " property," and there isn't, 
and can't be, enough of them on earth, to keep the people alive, 
be they many or few. Henry Clay says " that is property, which 
the Lav/ makes property." The brilliant creature was driven to 
say it, to maintain slavery Law is the author of " property," and 
it can as legitimately make one common thing, or creature, so, as 
another. A creature, as legitimately as a thing, and one creature, 
legitimately as another. A biped, as a quadruped — a man, as an 
ox. Accordingly Custom Law has made man " property." It 
has chosen the Negro. He is docile, and pliant, and will bear 
being appropriated — alias enslaved. It would enslave, alias 
appropriate any other class of mankind, that could be kept and 
used in that state. The Law is no respecter of person or thing, 
in this behalf. May-be I am impracticably fine here. May-be 
not. I am sick as death at heart, at this mortal — miserable strug- 
gle among mankind for a living. " Poor Devils" — they better 
never have been born, a million fold — than to run this gauntlet 
of life — after a living — or the hare means of running it ! Look 
about you, and see your squirming neighbors, writhing and twist- 
ing like so many angle worms in a fisher's bait-box — or the wrig- 
gling animalculae, seen through a magnifying glass, in a vinegar 
drop held up to the burning sun. How they look, and how they 
feel. How base it makes them all — all but a few, rare, eccentric 
spirits, who, while others have monopolized all the goods, have 
monopolized all the soul, that ought to belong to the human race. 



288 MACBETH. 



I know some it couldn't spoil. But. coming from house to print- 
ing office tliis morning — even in our small city — I felt dismayed 
at the aspect of the struggling and panting people — pushed to 
death for a living ! Nobody is safe on the earth amid such a 
system. Laws as severe as fate can't protect any body. Let it 
be abandoned — or let this be the winding up of the generations — 
I say. 



MACBETH. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of May 2, 1844.] 

Readers of Shakespeare doubtless unite pretty much in horror 
of his murder of Duncan, and of his usurpation of the throne of 
Scotland, and denounce his " Lady" as an ambitious fiend. (Not 
" friend," as our type said, Herald before last, speaking of her 
husband. " This friend of Scotland." We all agree with Mac- 
duff, in calling Macbeth "fiend of Scotland." And why? Be- 
cause he murdered Duncan and others to get the crown. Well, 
what crown was ever obtained, or maintained, in any other way ? 
How came Duncan by the crown 1 Perhaps, by inheritance. 
And how, his ancestor ? How came the crown on any of their 
heads, but by subjugating, and subjcct-'mg the people, by means 
of murder and violence 1 Bonaparte killed ever so many Dun- 
cans and Bourbons, to get the Imperial Diadem on to his head. 
He goes — or went — till he conquered every body — by the name of 
usurper and tyrant. The Bourbons were called Kings and " most 
Christian Majesty." And after Napoleon overrun Europe, and 
" trampled her vineyards" all down, with the red hoofs of his 
war-horses, he was called. The Emperor. His usurpation was 
forgotten. And had he died a conqueror, his son would have 
succeeded him, and the throne of France would have gone 
down a long line of legitimate monarchs, by the grace of God 
and divine right — to kill, or rebel against, any of whom, would 
have been treason and usurpation. And had Macbeth succeed- 
ed, and had sons, — had his terrible auguries turned out to the 
" hope," as well as to the " ear" — his " none of woman born," 



MACBETH. 289 



and his march of " Birnam Wood," then had the Scottish crown 
descended legitimately in his royal line — as that of England did 
in the line of Conqueror William. After-insurgents against them, 
would have been murderers and tyrants — the Macbeths of after- 
times. 

I know Macbeth was treacherous and murderous — but then he 
was after a crown, and how was he to get it ? He had as good 
right to it as Duncan. What right had Duncan to be King of 
Macbeth — any more than Macbeth to be King of Duncan ! If 
Macbeth had reached out civilly after the diadem, next morning, 
at breakfast — instead of murdering Duncan overnight, to make 
way to it — Duncan would have had his head smitten off, and 
hung out to the kites from the turrets of Inverness. It was a ter- 
rible murder. Macbeth was a dreadful assassin. He " murdered 
sleep," — the sleep of his tired guest — and his kinsman. Sleep, 
that was " knitting up the ravelled sleeve of" poor Duncan's 
"care," — "the balm of" his "hurt mind." And that "Lady 
Macbeth," — she was a woman-monster. She put her backward 
Soldier up to it. But then, kingship, and queenship, was at the 
bottom of it all. Those terrible incentives, and prices of mur- 
der. Let mankind beware of them. Duncan wasn't wise, that 
he trusted his life in the way of an ambitious — crown-wanting sub- 
ject. He might have known his life wouldn't have been secure, 
out from behind his own battlements. Kings can't travel se- 
curely. Victoria gets shot at, every now and then, in her own 
parks. She can't take a secure breath any where in her Island. 
She dares not go over to Ireland. She has ventured to France — 
but I guess old Duke Wellington made her go — for some reason 
of State. She can't travel any where, " to see the world." She 
don't dare come to America, for instance — as her subjects can. 
She can't " go abroad," any where — for comfort and recreation. 
She has got a thing on her head, that makes her a mark every 
where, for the archery of exasperated and down-trodden human- 
ity. It fills her with the apprehension of Cain, lest every one 
finding her should slay her. She isn't safe any where — not even 
in the walled court of Windsor Castle. She is a Usurper, and 
if not a murderer direct, like " Lady Macbeth," she sprung from 
25 



290 LETTER FROM PLYMOUTH— EXTRACT. 

murder — inherits it and perpetuates it. And by and by, some 
Macbeth will murder her poor queenly sleep, or shoot her down, 
like a pigeon on the wing — as she flits across the glades of 
Windsor Forest — by the side of that cipher at the left hand of 
a royal digit — the incidental Albert. Nobody need kill him. 
He ceases at the death of his wife and sovereign. 

Duncan was a murderer and Usurper, as well as Macbeth. 



LETTER FROM PLYMOUTH— EXTRACT. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of August 16, 1844.] 

As we were halting in the Concord street for passengers, a dis- 
charge of cannon announced the arrival of a company of Butch- 
ers, from Woburn, Mass. They were not the butchers that kill 
the calves — and wear the long white frocks — but human butch- 
ers, with parti-colored dresses on. They had come to visit the 
Concord Homicides. They marched into the streets as we sat in 
the stage. They had some hateful-looking things in their hands, 
hollow at the ends — with knife-blades fastened to them — and the 
foremost of them carried long naked knives. They were moving 
after a savage kind of music, made by blowing in trumpets, and 
beating on hollow drums. A hard man rode a noble-looking 
horse, side-ways, before them, as they went by. This was milita- 
ry, I suppose, but it seemed to distress the horse greatly. Close 
by the Homicide leaders, I discovered a great, fat priest, lolling 
along — one of those, that go by the name, in these days, of min- 
isters of the gospel of Peace. There he was, keeping a sort of 
half-time to the savage music, and counting one among the band 
of the Homicides. He had no gun, or knife in his hands, nor 
trumpet, nor drum-stick. I couldn't see any thing for the great, 
solemn-looking fellow to do — unless he prays for them. They 
say the Homicides have one, to every band, to do their praying. 
They fight, and he prays for luck. It was a horrible sight, and 
made me heart-sick for my kind. I was relieved when the stage 
drove out of the village, out of sight and hearing of the evangeli- 
cal racket. 



LETTER FROM PLYMOUTH— EXTRACT. 291 

Reached here at 7, P. M. The Peinigewassett Valley all of a 
deep green — the trees flush with leaves, and the meadows dark 
with verdure, although it is but just past hay-time. The late rains 
have made it look like Spring. There isn't a lovelier little valley, 
after all, any side the sea I have been, or in any land, than this 
same Valley of the Pemigewassett. No clearer stream strays 
from side to side of any wide meadow, and no bluer hills senti- 
nel any low lands, than pile to the skies, to the northward of this 
sequestered hollow. I never saw it show finer than now. The 
sun was taking its last look, as we came in sight of it. A tide of 
remembrances once more flowed over me, as I passed by scene 
after scene, of earliest boyhood. Large trees, that were saplings 
almost, when I used to climb them. An old fishing-brook, that 
had only changed by growing smaller, from the clearing of the 
woods up near its sources. In other respects, the same as when 
I couldn't jump across its scanty channel. Next day, at noon, I 
had the pleasure of seeing The Hutchinsons and their compan- 
ions for the mountains, entering the village. To have them enter 
ray native village was, to me, an event. They came in sing- 
ing Felicia Hemans' *' Voice of Spring," — and that season never 
came down upon a valley, after a long absence, with a sweeter 
melody. 

" I come, I come, ye have called me long, 
I come o'er the mountains, with light and song." 

And so they did. I haven't been so excited before here, since 
George Thompson came to pour his anti-slavery music, in 1834. 
Kindred advents, — George, to pour his matchless music of Speech, 
and they, their matchless speech of Music. I rejoiced at both, 
for my dear native spot. I had a little anxiety, lest the odium 
entertained here for my heresies, and for me, on account of 
them, should be extended to them, as my companions and ad- 
mired friends, and prevent their having an audience, at their 
Concert. I did not care so much on their account, for they can 
get audiences enough, any where and every where, — but on ac- 
count of the people of the Valley here, who I wished might enjoy 
the rare treat, I had taken some pains to procure for them. For 



292 THE ANTI-SLAVERY PLATFORM. 

really, I desire to make them no unkinder return, for any lack of 
love they may entertain towards me — and I am truly glad they 
have enjoyed it, and that I had some agency in procuring it for 
them. And I trust the day will come, and in my own day too, 
when they will all find they had as much cause to be hostile to 
me for this, as for any act, towards them, of rny life. 

The Concert was in the Court House — a fine room for music, 
but too small for the audience, in a dog-day night. It was 
crowded. Many people came in from the surrounding towns. 
The Hutchinsons have never sung to a more intelligent and taste- 
ful audience, of any size, in any place. And they never sung 
more freely, or in freer spirit and strain. The air was somewhat 
oppressive and non-elastic, but they were in capital spirits. Some 
of their songs were absolutely wonderful. I wish I had time to 
particularize. I want to say a good many things about that little 
Concert — to me, the most interesting they can ever give. But I 
have no time. I was glad to see my old and venerated friend 
Judge Livermore present, at the age of near fourscore — though 
it was several miles from his residence — and a dark evening. 
And when they sung Longfellow's " Excelsior," — and Judson 
sent down that chorus word, from the height of the high Alps 
young genius was scaling, — "It is your own motto-word, young 
men," remarked the Judge, enthusiastically, and in his own pe- 
culiar, "excelsior" style; a style, as rare as the music he was 
lauding. But I am interrupted, and must close. 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY PLATFORM. 

[From the Liberty Bell, December, 1844.] 

. Anti-Slavery has no Platform. Its wide and illimitable plat is 
without form, and without formation. It never was constructed. 
Men did not jmt it up. It was not made with hands. Act or 
Corporation never lifted tool upon it, or put into it any of their 
joiner-work. Its measureless arena lays, as it lay originally, and 
wlien Humanity first set down her foot upon it. 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY PLATFORM. 293 

These " Platforms" have limits, and they are setup in limitation 
of human rights and liberty. There is not room for mankind on 
them, not counting woman, who, of course, never sets her foot 
upon them. The Anti-Slavery ground was spread for the race to 
tread it. It is dead level — or rather living level. All feet upon 
it stand even, and if you witness inequality of heads, it is be- 
cause some who stand upon it are taller than those about them ; 
and it is because the ground is level, that there is this inequality, 
that those who are intrinsically tall are seen overtopping the rest. 
These " Platforms" are not level. They are not only elevated — 
set up above the pit, to which they consign mankind — but they 
are urilevel of themselves. They slope. There is distinction 
and inequality on their own fictitious and baseless scaffoldings ; 
and the unevenness of tops that appears amid those who mount 
them is no indication of the stature of those who wear them. A 
short Honorable, or a dwarfish Reverend, would overpeer among 
them the moral Cedars of Lebanon. The " Platform" admits men 
upon it. It admits, too, topics of discussion. It has its " extra- 
neous matters," and its " foreign subjects." Freedom is always 
foreign to it, and Humanity extraneous. But with Anti-Slavery 
there is no admission or exclusion of men or mankind. No mat- 
ter is extraneous or foreign to it, that Humanity, in any of its 
forms, feels cause to introduce. Its great business is to assert 
for mankind, and secure to them, the right of free and sovereign 
introduction of any and every matter, within the boundless scope 
of human concern. And should Obscurity, or Weakness, or 
Eccentricity, driven into its assemblies from the " Platforms," off 
which Humanity is every where hunted, lift up their " irrelevant" 
voices, it is never matter for drag-out, or silencing, or calls to 
order. Anti-Slavery's " rules of order" are the order of human 
nature. The " Manual" they are writ down in, is every body's 
own bosom. The " Chair" free-speech addresses, at its gatherings, 
is the gathered multitude ; and it speaks, amenable to no " call to 
order," without its own sovereign breast. Anti-Slavery fears no 
disturbance or confusion. It bravely takes its chance on the 
waves of Freedom — preferring liability to hurricane and tempests, 
to the constrained and subject calms. It discerns, always amid 
25* 



2U4 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR— EXTRACT. 

the volcano that may heave the hills towards heaven, and the 
ocean to the stars, that centre-of-gravity principle, beautifully 
described by Charles Burleigh, at a meeting in the New Hamp- 
shire woods, as sure to bring every thing safe down to its place 
again, and secure the world forever from deluge and conflagra- 
tion. 

Anti-Slavery " new organizes," when she builds her " Plat- 
forms ;" rather, she never builds them, for she never " new organ- 
izes." She has spoken, heretofore, of her " Platform," but it was 
with borrowed s])eech — borrowed from Slavery and its manifold 
" Institutions." She is leaving off its use, and trimming her vo- 
cabulary of its outlandish phraseology. And it is her staunchest 
friend, that shall be faithful and frank to remind her of any ad- 
herence to speech and usages she comes to reform. 



LETTER FROM THE EDITOR— EXTRACT. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of April 25, 1843.] 

Plymouth, April 21, 1845. 
Dear J. — Yet another letter — though I hope to be the bearer 
of it, myself — for I am almost literally " mad for" home — as 
poor Byron's shipwrecked sailors were " mad for land." You 
speak of Spring, at Concord, and your spring-like correspondent, 
" K.," speaks of such a season at New York city. I cannot com- 
prehend either of you, here among the mountains. " Winter is 
lingering" here, not " in the lap of May," — but on the breast of 
poor, dismal April — on which the grim Season is brooding and 
incubating like the nightmare. It looks more like what I im- 
agine a Southern winter, than like any thing that can be called 
Spring. The gloom and cheerlessness of the northern winter, 
without any of its bracing elasticity. The birds are about — 
some of them — but they act as if they had been deceived by 
some sj)ring-token or other, and were abroad before the time. 
They try to sing — poor things, but it goes heavily — betraying 
dej)ression of spirits. Or, it may be, I am imparting the hue of 



LETTER FROM THE EDITOR— EXTRACT. 295 

my own, to their music. It is true, or else I fancy it, that some 
of them have lost their wonted melody. The Ground Bird, my 
own favorite melodist, (among birds I mean) has lost that lay 
that used to make my child-heart sick, with its too sweet and 
plaintive strain. The little gray Ground Bird, with the black 
speck under the throat. It is a sort of snow-bird, and is about 
in the Spring, on the first spots of bare ground, picking up the 
earliest seeds or insects disclosed by the earth — and at certain 
times of day, perching on the top of some lowly tree, or bush, it 
lifts its little head towards heaven, and pours a lay, I have never 
heard equalled. I have heard Canary bird, and Linnet, and 
piping-Bullfinch, and every bird, that heedless vanity has caged 
up, to civilize the *' native wood note wild ; " and there is not a 
note of them all to match the lay of the Ground Bird. But I 
have heard one sing this morning, from a tree top by my native 
garden fence, and it did not sound as it used to. The tune 
might read the same, writ down, but it was of a different tone, 
and on another key, to my ear. 

I am glad to see by your paper, that remonstrances are being 
issued from various quarters, against the barbarous practice of 
shooting these dear birds. I would sign such a remonstrance, 
and stretch moral suasion to its utmost tension, in backing it up. 
The heart that is not moved by the chorus of the sweet birds, 
is not human. It is fit for treason, stratagems, &c. I am asha- 
med that any of us have ever killed a little bird. I bitterly regret 
the many I stoned in my boyhood. It was not cruelty with me, 
but a wild heedlessness, and the pride of marksmanship. They 
did not allow me a gun, and so I was driven to the aboriginality 
of stone-throwing, in which, I lament to say, I had a fatal dexter- 
ity. It ought to be regarded as a heinous fault, to kill or scare, 
an innocent bird. Friend McFarland, of the Statesman, grants 
an indulgence, I see, to the partridge-shooter and the duck-killer. 
I would not join him in it. A partridge has as good right to life, 
as the robin, and the wild duck, as the little sparrow. To be 
sure, there is rather more of the heroic (or less of the cowardly) 
in hunting " the partridge in the mountain," and the wild duck 
by the margin of the lake, than in murdering a robin red-breast 



296 FUNERAL AT SEA. 



singing in the top of an apple-tree. But life is life, and rights 
are rights. I see no right any one has to kill a partridge. If 
any body feels carniverous, after devouring what cattle and swine 
come in their way — let them deny themselves a little, and let the 
beautiful wood-hen live. A tramp in the dark woods is worth a 
hundred fold, if you can every now and then come across a par- 
tridge, or hear one whirr through the bushes, or drum on the dis- 
tant log. And how fine to see the wild duck " circling the lake," 
or a fleet of them rippling its surface ! Oh no, let the partridge 
live, and the duck, and every thing else that is alive, and let us 
eat things no more sensitive than the fruits of the earth. 



FUNERAL AT SEA. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of April 25, 1845.] 

It was my fortune to witness one, on my return from " The 
World's Convention," in 1840. It was on board the Acadia, then 
making her first great trip across the Atlantic. I went aboard on 
the 4th of August, as she lay in the river Mersey, at Liverpool. 
I shall never forget how she looked from the quay — as, from amid 
a crowd of utter strangers, with a few dear friends about me, from 
whom I was about to part probably forever, I gazed upon her 
dark form laying out in the stream. I was in old Europe, and 
about to commit myself for the New World, to that small bark — 
and she to make experiment of her power to stem the ocean tide. 
A dirty little steamer, the Tug, took us aboard her. The Tug 
went back to the pier, and we were committed for the terrible 
voyage. Imagination could not compass it, or fathom its pathless 
centre, where no way-marks can ever be set up, to show where it 
was travelled. Always new and untried, is the ocean voyage, and 
the old mariner, though he may grow familiar with the sky and 
stars above him, can never grow familiar with the ocean. He can 
know its shores and channels, but the great deep, out at sea, is 
always a mystery to him, as when it first is traversed. I could 
not see across, in my fancy, to imagine the existence of the dear. 



FUNERAL AT SEA. 297 



dear objects, I had left beyond it. They were to me, as if in an- 
other world. The Acadia took up her anchor, and made herself 
ready for her journey. I hear now the wild, melancholy sea-cry 
of her Glasgow tars as they hoisted the anchor, and the clanking 
of her windlass. She walked down the river, out into the Irish 
Channel. It was in the afternoon, and on Tuesday. All that 
night, and the next day, the sea was as smooth as a pond, and the 
motion of the Steamer as steady as a canoe on its surface. Night 
closed upon us just as we left the channel for the open ocean. I 
remember the great Rock— the out-post that guards the sea-most 
point of old Ireland, and how it looked, as we passed it at twi- 
light, looming through the dusk. I bade farewell to it, in token 
of final and complete parting from my dear friends in Ireland. 

It was awful to enter, in the night, upon that terrible ocean. I 
was awakened at midnight by the tossing of the Steamer as she 
got out where the great waves began to take hold of her. They 
struck her in the breast like peals of thunder. And in the morn- 
ing, when I got upon deck, to witness the conflict between the 
Steamer and the Sea 1 The great waves rolling in sheer from the 
whole Atlantic, and before a strong wind, and the Steamer en- 
countering them right ahead, with her (I don't know how many) 
hundred horse power— and at the rate of ten miles an hour. Not 
gliding over the surges like a sail packet, but dashing right 
through them, by main strength. It was appalling to witness the 
conflict. The angry ocean, as if in rebuke of her presumption, 
throwing its mountain waves against the rash vessel, and the 
stubborn ship answering it with her Steam. The waves would 
lift her on their ridges, till it would look to be sixty or seventy 
feet down her sides, and then she would plunge up to her very 
throat in the thundering brine, with all her paddles under, and 
still going, with a noise like heavy thunder. It seemed a long 
time dubious which would get the mastery— but steam and sea- 
manship proved the overmatch, and the Acadia made her trium- 
phant way. 

I had seen among the under-officers of the ship a man they 
called Pike. He belonged to the Royal Navy, and had been in 
the East India service, and had come on board the Acadia to fa- 



298 FUNERAL AT SEA. 



miliarize himself, I understood, with Steam navigation. The 
poor fellow had caught some kind of disorder incident to the cli- 
mate of the East, and I remember well the deadly, saffron-colored 
look of his eyes and complexion. He was about on deck, a day 
or two, and then disappeared — and I learned, after some days, 
he was confined, and mortally sick, they thought, in our end of 
the ship. My berth was on the windward, and his on the lee- 
ward breast of the Steamer. I among the servants of the nobili- 
ty and gentry who had passage in the first cabin, and he among 
the under-officers. I had taken passage, as a matter of anti-sla- 
very economy, and as best comporting with the outlawry of an 
abolitionist, in the steerage. I remember among my mess-mates — 
(or rather mates in the want of mess, for we had, as a general 
thing, nothing to eat) a young Irishman, servant to the comedian, 
Thomas Power, who was then on his way to America, and who 
was lost, poor fellow, on his return, in the ill-fated President. I 
made quite an acquaintance with the servant, and caught now and 
then a glance at the master, as he promenaded to our end of the 
ship. For he could visit our end, though we could not visit his. 
The distinction was lost, on his return in the President. 

Poor Lieut. Pike was on the leeward side of the ship, where 
he could not have the air. They let a sort of funnel, or air-duct, 
down through the gangway into his berth, made of sail cloth, and 
open at the top like a tunnel, which was turned to catch the fresh 
north-west wind. I could not go in to see the poor fellow, for he 
was an officer, and I but a steerage passenger. I saw a little 
dandy Doctor about ; ship's surgeon, or surgeon's mate, or some 
such official, who had the dosing of him, and the killing him ac- 
cording to rule. I asked him one day, how the poor man did. 
" Quite near his end, sir," said he, as feelingly as if I had asked 
him the time of day. The Doctor was leaning against the ship's 
railing, and had a volume of Dickens in his hand If I could 
have thrown his calomel overboard, and him — not overboard — 
but out of the notion of doctoring, and got the poor man into the 
Tresh air, and put him into the wet sheet, and bathed him in blessed 
cold water, and rubbed him with the friendly crash towel, and 
spoke brotherly words to him ; no doubt he might have been 



FUNERAL AT SEA. 299 



saved — not to enter again, but quit forever — the hateful service 
of that Royal Navy, the grand pirate armada that infests earth's 
outraged waters. I have no doubt he might have been cured and 
saved, with cold water, and fresh air, and deliverance from the 
Doctor. But he could have neither. He coidd taste the blessed 
breeze only through that canvass.respirator. That was scientific. 
He was under the ship's Doctor, That was orderly and corpora- 
tion-like. 

Poor Pike died. I saw some little preparation going on among 
the sailors and under-officers, and they told me the man was dead. 
Pretty soon, they brought up from below, upon deck, something 
sewed up in a sail-cloth sack, alout the size of a man. There 
was a slight hush, I observed, in the demeanor of the sailors. 
They feel as much as any body, poor fellows, but are not allowed 
to show it. Poor Pike, — it was his body. His occasion for ac- 
quaintance with naval steaming was all over, and they were about 
to commit his lifeless clay to the bosom of the old Deep, on which 
he had been so long a roamer. We were within about tv/o days 
of Halifax, but all were strangers to him there, and there seemed 
no occasion to keep the body till the Steamer should arrive. She 
kept on her way while the brief and unceremonious preparations 
were made for his burinl. The sack had sewed up, in its foot, 
some heavy bars of lead — to ballast the poor clay on the voyage 
it was about to take. 

All came forward — captain, passengers and all — to unite in 
the funeral procession. Four sailors took up the bier upon their 
shoulders. The little procession — which was all the world that 
could join it, or could witness that funeral — all the world that dead 
man had left behind him, on the deck of that little bark, which, 
however bulky in harbor or at the wharf, looked like a chip or 
an egg-shell out on the desert ocean — the little funeral procession 
formed, and took op its march for the grave. They could not march 
far — so they coursed round about, doubling some points on deck, 
until they came to a pause a little back of the Steamer's wheel- 
house, when the foremost carriers rested their ends of the bier on 
the ship's railing. The Acadia meanwhile kept on her way, and 
I believe with unslackened speed. I was painfully struck, I re- 



300 FUNERAL AT SEA. 



member, with the perfect absence of every thing funereal, and 
with the abrupt, seaman-like air of the movement. There were 
no mourners — no tears — no relatives. The poor man's mother — 
his sisters — brothers — if he had any, — where were they ! I 
thought of it, but I could not weep. One of our litde world had 
become clay among us, and was to be disembarked on another 
voyage than ours. It was a thing had get to be done, and the 
less ceremony or delay about it, the better. The ship must be 
looked after. The dead man was no longer a passenger. There 
was no leisure for ceremonial, and what could ceremonial have 
availed, if there had been. As singular, however, the funeral 
seemed to me, as the strange grave where they were to lay him. 
I had not known the poor man. I had seen him but a few times, 
soon after coming aboard, as he glided about, a minute or two in 
sight, with his handsome blue jacket and trowsers on, and with 
his saffron-colored look. But it seemed to me, he should have had 
a coffin, and a pall, and some circumstance about his burial. The 
sailors knew better. And that wild Ocean too, careering so aw- 
fully by us — it seemed to me no place to commit a poor human body 
to, the remains of a fellow^man. These were but momentary 
emotions. The man was dead, and recked not of the ocean burial. 
I thought of my own dear brothers, I had left in my native land, — 
how if it were one of them, and thought I could hardly feel about 
it, if it were, as I should on shore. There we were, at mercy of 
sea and sky, life a precarious thing, and to die and be cast into the 
deep, nothing so very strange. The Captain stepped forward to 
perform the burial service. There were divines on board, but none, 
I believe, of the Church of England, and these alone, I suppose, 
could officiate, at a burial of one belonging to the Church of Eng- 
land's Royal Navy ! The Captain read out of Old England's 
prayer-book, her impressive and beautiful " funeral service at sea." 
He read it with that sort of superstitious reverence, which Eng- 
land bids all her soldier subjects feel, for the prayer-book and the 
dead, though she cares nothing for the living. We all stood with 
uncovered heads to hear it. It was finished, and the burial board 
on which the dead man lay, was launched from the railing into the 
Deep. The plunge was faintly heard, the corse sunk instantly 



THE JEWS AND HOLY LAND. 301 

and disappeared. The board was seen a moment, as it drifted 
into the Steamer's wake. The brief funeral was over, the ship's 
crew went about their business, the passengers dispersed, and 
every thing resumed at once its ordinary appearance. There 
was no house of mourning, for the procession to return to from 
the grave. The Sea had got all that remained of her mariner, 
and the Ship was on her pathless way. Will that Sea ever give 
up that body, again, as Old England's service says it will ? Or 
had it mingled with that dread mass of rolling matter, in eternal 
undistinguishment, to be part and parcel of its " wild waves' 
play?" 

Oh ! that mankind loved humanity while living — while it 
needs and can appreciate human affection. We should not then, 
I think, " puzzle our will " about the destination of the dead. 
There would be so much of the living left to love and care for, 
that the dead, when at length men should go late to their dissolu- 
tion, would cease entirely to be objects of human solicitude. 
Now, so little is cared for the unhappy living, that infinite and 
bitter and unavailing regrets, are left to accumulate upon the 
dead. 



THE JEWS AND HOLY LAND. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of April 25, 1845.] 

I SEE, in a number of the Boston Courier that strays into my 
hand, that there is expectation of the return of these scattered 
people to the region of Jerusalem. Major Noah, of New York, is 
appealing to the christian nations, to facilitate their return. The 
Editor of the Courier sympathizes in the appeal, and I presume 
that it is a general religious notion, that in fulfilment of prophecy, 
they are to return, and light down on " Holy Land," from all re- 
gions of the earth where they are scattered. And a religious 
wish, also. The people of Christendom think it kind-of-Christ- 
ian, to desire the return of the Jews to Palestine; to expect it, 
and to do something towards bringing it about. The Govern- 
2(1 



302 THE JEWS AND HOLY LAND. 

ments, also, will probably participate in it, and be superstitious to 
employ their political power, and their armies to aid the " coming 
in of the Jews." 

Now, I desire most truly, that an end may be put to the reli 
gious persecutions of the Jews. Christendom has persecuted them 
as barbarously as ever Jews did Christians. And it ought to stop. 
B&t then the rescue of the Jews, is of no more consequence than 
the rescue of any other people — of Turks, Greeks, Polanders, or 
American slaves. The intolerance and persecution inflicted on 
them, ought to cease, not because they are Jews, — nor because 
they are Old Testament people, but because they are men, women 
and children. It is not because they were a " chosen people," 
and had Abraham, Isaac and Jacob among them, and Moses and 
David. Nor because it was prophesied they would return. But, 
because they are sufferers under persecution, and it is base and 
bigoted and barbarous to inflict it upon them. Because persecu- 
tion is grievous to be borne, and wrong to inflict. 

As to the Jews flocking to Palestine, I would say of it, as I do 
of the slaves running to Canada, — and colored people " return- 
ing" to Africa. So long as Jews can't have quarter, any where 
out of Palestine, I should advise them to run there, and the slave 
to Canada, that is, if they could have quarter when they get there. 
But were I Major Noah, I would put in for a better destiny for 
my countrymen. I would go for their rights where they are. 
I will join him in an agitation for their liberation here, on the 
spot, as many of them as are in the country. It is their country, 
as much as it is any body's. They need not run to " Holy Land." 
They have a right to this country. Not as Jews, against Ameri- 
cans, but as men. As all other people have a right here. And 
I would not go to Jerusalem, or Jordan. New England or New 
York is as good as Pale.stine, and a great deal better. And Con- 
necticut River, or the Merrimack, or the Old Hudson, are either 
of them as good rivers as any Jordan that ever run into a dead, 
or a live sea. And as " Holy," for that matter. The Jews had 
better stay where they are, every where, for all going to Jerusalem. 
If they can better their condition, by migrating, I would migrate. 
I would go East — West — South — any point of compass, — to btt- 



THE JEWS AND HOLY LAND. 303 

ter viy real condition. But they better leave off being Jews, and 
turn mankind. They will make as good folks as any body. And 
if these Americans won't tolerate them, or allow them human 
rights here, I tell Major Noah, the Herald of Freedom shall be 
at their service, for an agitation that shall shake Christendom — 
till its bigotry is shaken out of it ! Not that the Herald can 
alone shake Christendom, unless Major Noah will help us write 
for it. But, then if Jews can't have a home, where they hap- 
pen to be, the Major, and every body else, ought to go in for a 
shaking of the Earth about it. And the Major would be better 
employed in carrying on such an agitation for Jewish Rights, 
than in summoning Israelites from the four quarters of the globe, 
to Palestine, Goat Island, or any other island in the Niagara 
River, 

As to the "return of the Jews," I regard it as a delusion. 
The Jews had better not think of returning. They would perish 
on the way, half of them, if they should attempt it. And the 
rest die of home-sickness, after they got there. Holy Land looks 
pretty, to the fancy and on the maps the children draw of it Sun- 
days, but come to get there, sand is sand, and rocks, rocks. Let 
the Turks keep it, if they have got wonted there, and can stand 
it. The Turk shouldn't be routed. And the idea of keeping 
up this Jewish distinction, is inhuman and unwise. It is time 
it was merged, and annihilated. In Humanity, as in " Christ 
Jesus," as Paul says, " there is neither Jew nor Greek." And 
there ought to be none. It is high time all these hostile distinc- 
tions were annihilated; these obstacles to the harmony and fel- 
lowship of mankind, done away. Down with all of them. And 
away with your notion of " Holy Land." Why Texas is as Holy 
as Judea, isn't it, and San Jacinto as good a stream to baptize in, 
or any thing else, as Jordan. If San Jacinto is a stream. Is it 
not so? The rocks and sands of Palestine have been worshipped 
long enough. While they continue to be worshipped, there is no 
regard left in the breast of the bigot worshipper, for his lean and 
bowed-down kind. Let Humanity be reverenced with the ten- 
derest and loftiest devotion. Suffering, discouraged, down-trod- 
den — hard-handed — haggard-eyed, — care-worn mankind. Let 



304 " PEN AND liNK SKETCHES." 

these be regarded a little. Would to God I could alleviate their 
every sorrow, and leave them a chance to laugh ! They are mis- 
erable now. They might be as happy as the black-bird on the 
spray, and as full of melody. The time may come it will be so. 
But it can't be brought about by these " Second Advents," or 
" Comings in of the Jews,"' — as I think. I only speak my opinion. 



" PEN AND INK SKETCHES." 

[From the Herald of Freedom of May 9, 1845.] 

A DOOR neighbor has loaned me " The Boston Atlas," a great 
pursy sheet, as broad as a bed quilt. I, of course, have to bor-" 
row such sheets, when I would look into them, — which is not 
often. They would not exchange with the Herald of Freedom, 
if it should be proposed to them, unless, perhaps, for more boot 
than they are worth. I would not exchange even, with the Atlas, 
or any other of their great political winding-sheets, unless for the 
purpose of affording some haunter of their reading rooms, oppor- 
tunity of glancing at a sincere and earnest paper. Some of them 
■might be benefited by it. Political reading rooms are not the 
ground into which to cast Anti-Slavery seed. They are less un- 
genial, to be sure, than ecclesiastical reading rooms — for the 
genius that presides over them, in hostility to freedom, is only 
human. In the Ecclesiastical Reading Room the tyrant Genius 
is divine. Human despotism is capable of being reformed. I 
would swap even with the Atb.s, if they would, — rather than read 
a borrowed paper. But they wouldn't, I guess. Any how, I have 
in my hand a borrowed Atlas, — and have read an article in it, 
under the heading at top of this one, which stirs up my old fancy 
for the poets. I have almost forgotten them, in the burly of anti- 
slavery labors and trials. Yet the Poets ought not to be forgotten. 
They are anti-slavery, themselves, almost all of them. Folks are 
obliged to be, when they write poetry. Slavery or pro-slavery 
cannot flow in poetical numbers. They have to issue in ragged 
prose. I do not now remember any poetry on the side of Slave- 



"PEN AND INK SKETCHES." 305 

ry. There have been rhymes, in behalf of Tyranny, such as 
that miserable, doggerel Hudibras. — pandering to the restored 
tyrants of England, against even the poor efforts at liberty made 
under Cromwell. It was rhyme, and had wit in it, — but it wasn't 
poetry. It would be a profanation of that eagle name, to call it 
so. Poetry is a mountain spirit — or a desert one — or an ocean. 
Something vast and majestic in it — comporting only with the 
genius of Liberty. All the Poets are to be ranked, I here ven- 
ture (perhaps rashly) to say, on the side of Liberty. 

" Pen and Ink Sketches," are of interviews — " evenings" and 
" breakfasts'" — with the great modern English poets — by a cor- 
respondent of the Atlas. He seems to be an Englishman — and, 
by his writing and the facts he mentions of intimacy with the 
poets and writers of England, to have enjoyed s.ome consideration 
among them. Writing here for pay, I suppose. Poor fellow, I 
hope he will get some. I wonder if they would pay, any of them, 
for Truth. Important , reformatory , /«or«Z truth, I mean. " Pen 
and Ink Sketches" are true enough, I presume — but they are un- 
disturbingly so. They do not " disturb the tranquillity" of any 
body. Editors will pay for such, — and they can afford to. Their 
mercenary, torpid subscribers love to read them. And they are 
better than politics. 

But I must come to an extract, which I thought I would trans- 
fer to our sheet, under a dearth of copy just at this moment. It 
is a digression, the writer says, from " sketches," he was making 
of the living. It is a sketch of the dead. And one of the most 
daring, soaring, mighty dead of the age — or of any ages. Of 
Byron. Many unamiable points about him. English points. 
Lord points. I am sorry he was a Lord. It was a great mis- 
fortune to him and to poetry. It was the occasion, doubtless, of 
that misanthrrpy that streams coldly through his poetry — like the 
" sun of the sleepless," he somewhere mentions, " which shines, 
but warms not, with its powerless rays." Had he been a man, in- 
stead of a Lord, and signed his name, human " George Gordon," 
instead of that marble, inhuman — " Byron," we should have had 
infinitely better poetry, and he might have had some enjoyment 
in the world. As it was, he had none. He went sneering through 
26* 



306 " P^N AND INK SKETCHES." 



life, as unsympathizing as a meteor that shoots on a winter night. 
He had no friends, and was nobody's friend. That poor Fletcher 
was his slave — and only worshippe-d him — not loved him. Byron's 
poetry mitigated his Lordship — but could not cure it. He was 
more of a Lord than a Poet — great poet as he was. He was 
born a Lord, and had that accursed aristocracy born into him, 
that curled his beautiful upper lip all his life-time, and sneered 
about it after he was dead. The Sketcher did not seem to 
know what ailed the " nose." I guess it was turned up by the 
distorting influence of Aristocracy and Lordship. If the Sketcher 
is an Englishman, he would worship it on that account. They 
have a religious veneration for Lordship, in England. For my 
part, I merely detest it. There is nothing endurable in it. I 
would not have it about. 

They would not let poor Byron's clay into Westminster Ab- 
bey — the pious English. They let in Thcmas Campbell's, I see, 
which was well — for Campbell was a Poet, every inch of him. 
His themes were Britain's bull-dog glory, on the sea — but poetry 
flamed in every line of him. They buried his clay in the same 
grave, it is said, with belligerent old Sam Johnson's. I have 
seen where they lay, in " Poet's Corner," in that old Abbey. 
Johnson and Garrick, there, side by side. I stood upon their 
Slabs — one foot on Johnson and the other on Garrick — for the 
surly old moralist had to lay with " Davy," at last, though he 
scorned to be on a level with him, in his life-time. I stood on 
both of them, and looked at Shakespeare's bust in half-relief on 
the wall of that Poet's Gallery. John Gay and Oliver Goldsmith 
and Joseph Addison were of the company. John Dryden stood 
off, in the rear, in a duskier region of the Abbey. But I must 
break off. We will give Byron's body a little corner of the 
Herald of Freedom — if they would not let it into Poet's Corner, 
in Westminster Abbey. They have not a bigger poet in it — my 
way of thinking. 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMEiNT. 307 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of May 2, 1845.] 

Let its great moral nature not be forgotten, or lost sight of, for 
a moment, by those engaged in it. Let not Slavery be mistaken 
for a physical evil, or a vicious institution of law — that can be 
cured by statutes or by physical violence. Let us not march the 
army against it — or rush, with sledge-hammers, to smite asunder 
the chains of the bondman, as though they were made of iron. 
The sledge-hammers might break the slave's legs, but never can 
sunder his manacles. They are not made of materials to be 
cloven apart by hammers or battle-axes. 

Slavery is a moral evil. This cannot be too often inculcated, 
or too earnestly. On the reception of this truth, and action cor- 
respondent to it, depends entirely the success of the enterprise 
for Slavery's overthrow. The chains that bind the Southern 
slave are the moral sentiment and feeling of the people of the 
North. Primarily the sentiment and feeling of New England. 
If New England were anti-slavery in sentiment — thoroughly and 
energetically so — Slavery could not subsist in Carolina and Geor- 
gia. Indeed, it could not subsist there, if New England were 
not actively pro-slavery. If we were neutral here. Slavery could 
not live at the South. If we cared as much for the colored man, 
as we care for the Irishman, (which is little enough,) the South 
could not enslave him long. Could they enslave the Irish people 
of this country, long — provided they had them now in bondage ? 
Would not the news that white Irishmen were sold at auction, in 
New Orleans, set all New England in a blaze? And would not 
the glare of the conflagration strike down on that gloomy man- 
market, and make the dark waters that surround it ruddy as with 
the light of a volcano ? 

As Slavery is a moral evil, rur applications for its cure should be 
moral. They should not be political, or military direct, political 
being military indirect. They should be moral. We have got 
to generate a humanity for this country, that will not allow of 
Slavery. Our present humanity is low toned. It cannot deliver 



308 THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. 

the slave. It allows the poor white man to be trodden under foot. 
The nominal free man. The institutions among us that are so 
unfriendly to the white poor, will sustain the slavery of the col- 
ored man. They will enslave him. We ask them to liberate 
him. They reply by ordering us to hold our peace. We are 
surprised at this, but ought not to be. The Institutions make 
Slavery, and therefore cannot overthrow it. And they cannot 
allow us to overthrow it. The overthrow of Slavery must involve 
the doing away of the oppressions practised by these institutions 
on the white poor. White Labor is all but enslaved among us. 
It is the slave of Capital. Capital buys it at auction. The 
Capitalist bids off the bones and sinews of Labor. The laborer 
thinks he gets the price of it. It does pass through his hands — 
but Capital tells him how he must spend it, and imposes on him 
so many burdens to maintain the idle, that it can keep him always 
subject, and always poor. It is impossible for Labor to get rich 
or free. I mean Labor generally. The Institutions capital sets 
up will exhaust Labor's means, and keep it down. The black 
laborer it enslaves outright in this country. The means of ab I- 
ishing Slavery must be employed in opening the eyes of the 
people to these tyrant Institutions. Anti-Slavery tells the truth 
about them. That is the way to get Slavery down. 

Some of our anti-slavery people — of the keenest moral vision 
formerly — are now purblind with the dust of politics. They do 
not throw political dust — but they help kick it up and love to be 
in it. It puts their eyes out. They do not hold office, or vote — 
but they will hover about the polls, to watch the balloting of others, 
and about the State House, where they can enjoy the turmoil of 
legislation. It blinds them to moral truth and renders them insen- 
sible to its power and beauty. It blunts their moral sense also— 
makes them conservative, contemptuous and tyrannical. We push 
the great Temperance Reform. These people cry out we are for- 
getting the slave. We give out Theodore Parker's great flashes of 
religious freedom. They say it is extraneous. We go for Free 
Meeting. They cry " monomania " — and " departure altogether 
from the anti-slavery platform." They demand of us to be pub- 
lishmg accounts of corporate anti-slavery meetings — with resolves 



LETTER FROM PLYMOUTH 309 

passed by their majorities — and lists of their officers. This is 
anti-slavery. This is Platform abolitionism. But when our Flints 
let off fire on to the communion wine, and set its alcohol to burn- 
ing blue ; when " Prospero " touches with master hand the siiT- 
nificant events of the times, and points out their bearing on the 
progress of humanity; — when our " K's " shed the light of their 
young genius on our movement and draw men's eyes to it by 
the beauty of its rainbow dyes, and make them philanthropists 
before they know it — and so, abolitionists ; when our Weavers, 
with a touch delicate and native as the very spider's — " design- 
ing " their moral " parallels," 

" Sure as De Moivrc, without rule or line," 

and unrolling before the delighted eye of Philanthropy, webs 
richer than ever were w-rought in the looms of Cashmere, — they 
toss their solemn heads at us and taunt that we are off the plat- 
form and dealing " in spiders and things !" They don't under- 
stand. Their eyes are full of political saw-dust. Read Thom- 
as Whalley on Authority. Is there no anti-slavery in it 1 Won't 
it do as much, to prepare the people to recognize the humanity 
of the slave and so give him liberty, to print that, as it would to 
print a list of officers in some anti-slavery society, or a resolve 
against the Annexation of Texas ? I think it will, more. 



LETTER FROM PLYMOUTH. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of May 16, 1845.] 

Dear John R. : I am away again and under the tedious, 
home-sick necessity of writing another of these away-from-home 
epistles editorial — and I haven't the spirits to write any thing. 
It is a glorious morning, and the sun is just peeping down over 
my native eastern ridge, into my Pemigewassett valley. Spring 
is opening fresh and beautiful and enough here " to charm all 
sadness but despair." And yet it scarce gives me elasticity of 
spirits enough to write you a dull line for the paper — which I 
told you I would do, at my hasty departure from home. Manifold 



310 LETTER FROM PLYMOUTH. 

misfortunes have made me irrecoverably heavy at heart — and the 
heaviest of all, the cold-blooded mockery of my heart's dearest 
affections by betraying friends. The thought of the many noble 
friends I have left, scarcely consoles me. The spirit perversely 
dwells on what it has lost — regardless of what remains to it. To 
think, that that little, miserable, mad attempt to insult our poor, 
half-starved old Herald of Freedom, down under the foolery of 
Board subjection should have made such a breach among hearts. 
And that men of such noble capabilities as my old, admired Gar- 
rison, should take such a pitiful occasion to assault me and to 
poison the minds of my dearest friends on earth against me — 
really in my bruised state, it proves almost too much for me. 
The assurance of being in the right only involves me in the mor- 
tification that they are ruinously in the wrong — and a wrong that 
will cost them their anti-slavery lives. Those that this miserable 
quarrel estranges from me, are not those I can triumph over. I 
am ashamed at their discomfiture. My own enthusiastic admira- 
tion and eulogium of them, heretofore, come back upon me now 
in their madness and folly, and overwhelm me with mortification. 
Whom shall I dare admire and praise again. 

But I must, must drive away this depression of spirits, — though 
it is a fearful task to drive away such an invader. I meant to 
Jiave given a word of call to the abolitionists to come to the an- 
nual meeting, and had written portion of it, you know, when the 
stage drove up to the door to take me from home. I can't finish 
out what I then began, and must defer saying any thing till an- 
other week, when I hope to be at home — and delivered, for the 
time being, at least, from the clamors of debt. Our staunch, old 
Free-Meeting hearts though, will not forget the accustomed time 
and place of " June Meeting." The Jiist Wednesday in June, 
the time, and the old Concord Tovm Hall, the place. I trust we 
shall meet every body of them there. And I hope we shall see 
there too, every assailant of our old volunteer sheet, which they 
" assaulted with intent to kill," and struck down and plundered 
and left for dead. They stripped the slain too eagerly. The 
slain was not dead. The Herald of Freedom, stunned, not mur- 
dered, by those assassin blows — rose up again from the ground, 



THE GREAT QUESTION OF THE AGE. 311 

like fabled Anteus — renewed and invigorated by touch of his 
mother, the Earth. I hope we shall meet the hands that dealt 
those blows — both the foreign and domestic hands. Let them 
appear and make good their felon assault on Freedom, in free 
meeting of the Society in whose name they made the mad at- 
tempt. See what that Society itself will say to them. Let them 
hear the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society utter its otvn voice 
on the foul attempt to murder its volunteer sheet, and then to 
dishonor the Society by shielding the deed under its name. 

" The Board," I see, have shrewdly forestalled the storm, by 
issuing a Corporation Call, in the form of town-meeting warrant, 
— making out and limiting the business of the meeting ! The 
first time, the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society has been 
summoned to such a meeting. Let the friends of freedom mark 
it as a " developement." They have selected us topics for our 
discussion ! I wonder if they have provided constables to keep 
the door and enforce the law on free speech f But I have not 
time, or spirit, to say more. My warmest greetings to the free- 
hearted champions of the Herald of Freedom. I will be with 
them again as soon as may be, when I hope to have lighter spirits. 
But lighter or heavier, they shall be heavy as death can shadov^ 
them, ere I will yield an hair's breadtli of ground to the tyrant 
contemners of Free Speech, the great hope and palladium of the 
Anti-Slavery movement. The coming times of the cause will 
recognize it — if it is derided now. Truth, our great weapon — 
spoken in magnanimous kindness to those in the wrong — Truth, 
told to save them — not to defeat them — ^and Speech, to tell it — 
shall it not be Free ! 

Yours, for it, till my own is forever dumb. N. P. R. 



THE GREAT QUESTION OF THE AGE. 

[J'rom the Herald of Freedom of May 16, 1845.] 

It seems to me, to be, the question between Authority, on the 
one hand, and the convictions of the Understanding, on the other. 
Can mankind ascertain what is right, or must they be authorita- 



312 THE GREAT QUESTION OF THE AGE. 

tively told it — and implicitly obey what is told them — or pretend 
to obey, which is, I suppose, all they can do. That is the great 
question. I hope it will be agitated, and kept agitated, till the 
truth is so far established, and men get familiarized to it, that 
some improvement can be made in their character and condition. 
Popery and Freedom, which of them is right, and which shall be 
the guiding genius of Christendom. 

The Anti-Slavery movement demands the ascertainment of the 
truth in this question. Anti-Slavery goes, I think, for the over- 
throw of Popery in all its forms, and under all its disguises. It 
demands liberty for the slave, on the ground that humanity is en- 
titled to be free — that freedom naturally and absolutely belongs 
to it. It refuses to rest the slave's claim to freedom, on any ex- 
ternal authority, whatever. But from the slave's nature, and the 
nature of liberty, i\ demands liberty for the slave, as fitting for 
him, and essential to his happiness. Whether Constitutions of 
government — or any laws of states allow it him or not, or whether 
Scriptures sanction his enslavement or not. It demands liberty 
for him, because it regards liberty as good for him and slavery 
evil and hurtful. And when the opponents of this demand present 
sacred warrant for slavery, or scripture examples of slaveholding, 
Anti-Slavery refuses to consider the fact of the warranty or of the 
examples, and denies at once that they are any authority in the 
case. It refuses to inquire whether any text is in favor of slavery 
or not — or whether " holy men of old" held slaves or not, " as 
they were moved by the spirit." It denies to " holy men of old" 
the prerogative of settling this thing, for any body but themselves. 
It claims to the men of present time the prerogative of settling it 
for themselves and attaches it to them as a duty. It is answered 
with the charge of " Infidelity." To this charge it demurs, as 
Lawyers say, and says, "what of that?" What if it is Infidel- 
ity — what of that? Truth and Righteousness say, that charge 
of "Infidelity" is no answer at all, — and that Slaveholding must 
answer further. 

But " Infidelity," says Authority, is an answer. If Scripture 
warrants slaveholding, it is justifiable. Well, another question 
arises, who shall decide what Scripture does warrant. There is 



THE GREAT QUESTION OF THE AGE. 313 

a good deal of Scripture — and there has been a good deal of com- 
piling — a good deal of adopting and a good deal of excluding — 
to say nothing of very considerable translating from one language 
into another. All raising an infinitude of questions, as to the 
meaning of Scripture and as to what is Scripture. Who shall 
settle these questions? Mr. Brownson says, the Pope of Rome 
must settle them. Every Protestant sect says, their Priesthood 
must settle them, in their corporate capacity — after a " season of 
prayer." Here is Authority. It is all Popery, every item of it, 
the Protestant as well as the Catholic. They differ, as Monarchy 
and Republicanism do. These differ, in form — but they are 
both — government. The Republic hangs a man as sovereignly 
as a King does. And the individual has no voice in it. He is 
hanged, without his concurrence. The Protestants denounce 
Rrownson as the advocate of arbitrary power. But are they not 
so, equally with himself ? The Protestants refer to Scripture — 
and so do the Catholics. The Catholic makes the Church tanta- 
mount to Scripture, in Authority, and the Protestants receive 
Scripture interpretation, and compilation and selection, implicitly, 
through the hands of their corporation of Priesthood. They both 
equally deny to individuals the right and the competency of pri- 
vate judgment in any thing. And the answer of both to every 
unadopted truth, is Infidelity. 

And what is this "Infidelity?" Why it is thinking for your- 
self In other words — thinking at all. To think, is to be Infi- 
del. To be implicit — and led (" by the blind") is religious. 
To think, or inquire — or look, is Infidel. To be any thing savor- 
ing of moral intelligence, is Infidelity. To have the use of any 
moral faculty, is Infidel. Any thing, but gaping and swallowing. 
And indeed these involve an activity that is in derogation of 
thorough-going implicitness. A true believer should not exert 
his muscles, " in and of himself" He should merely, not oppose 
the Pope's opening his mouth and putting down into his trustful 
stomach any thing His Holiness sees fit. I don't know but this 
is the true way — or that we have any positive or intelligent act to 
do in this world, any more than the vegetables have. I should 
like to know, if it is allowable. 
27 



314 "YOU ARE BEFORE THE AGE." 

« YOU ARE BEFORE THE AGE." 
[From the Herald of Freedom of May 23, 1845.] 

Said an abolitionist to me, a few weeks ago, " I like your pa- 
per, though I don't take it. I like to read it — but you go too 
fast — you're before the age." A sensible reason, said I, for not 
taking the paper ! 

I hear this on all sides — that the Herald of Freedom is " be- 
fore the age " They say it speaks the truth. An orthodox phy- 
sician told me the other day, " there was too much truth in what 
I said in it" — alluding to what I had written, and others — re- 
specting the Clergy and the Church, &,c. It is too true, said he, 
with a misgiving sort of laugh. " Too much truth in it !" I 
suppose that is a true cliarge. And the reason why the paper 
cannot be supported. If it had less truth in it, it would get more 
patronage. And if it hadn't any, it would be richly maintained 
and caressed. Some go so far as to confess there is " talent in 
the paper — no mistake." Now, if it wasn't for the t)-uth that is 
there, it would get along well enough. They like the talent — if 
it wasn't for the truth. I confess the charge, that there is talent 
in the paper — more than in any sheet, that issues of its size — 
and I do not know that I need put in that limitation. I, of 
course, am thinking of the writers who contribute to its columns, 
and who are not equalled by the correspondents of any sheet that 
falls in my way, though I think vastly more of the truth and 
beauty of what they say, than their talent at saying it. Why 
then is'nt the Herald of Freedom supported ? Why haven't we 
a list of two or three thousand subscribers? "It is before the 
Age." Well, I admit it — and I say that is the very reason why 
it should be encouraged — read — and sustained. It is read. It 
is before the Age. Not aside from the path the Age is in, and 
has got to tread, but before it. The Age is after it — on the 
way where the Herald of Freedom is now advancing. The Age 
has got to come up to it. But when it does — the Herald isn't 
there — it has gone on — and will still be " before the Age," and 
the Age and the patrons of its sheets — will still be crying out 
against it — because it is. 



"YOU ARE BEFORE THE AGE." 3I5 

" You are too fast." Well, friends, yoii are too slow. " You 
are altogether ahead of the times." Well, you are altogether in 
the rear of the times — astern of the times — at the tail of the 
times, if I must say it. And, which is the most honorable and 
useful position ? It is ahead of the times, to denounce slavery, 
and demand its abandonment. But that is no reason anti-slavery 
is wrong— or unreasonable, or imprudent, injudicious, or any of 
the epithets a laggard Age casts upon it. Is slaveholding right ! 
Are the institutions that support it, right ! Are they for the 
happiness, benefit, improvement, usefulness, innocency of the 
people? These are the questions. "You are before the Age!" 
Well, if I were not, it's high time I were. You ought to be 
before the Age. The Age is wrong. Whoever improves must 
go before. He must quit the Age, wherein it is wrong, and the 
charge that he is before it, is an admission that he is right. When 
Robert Fulton told them steam was better than wind, on the wa- 
ter, or than horse-flesh on the land, he was before the Age — 
though not a great ways before. He wasn't many years ahead 
of it. The Age is up with him now. They will begin to build 
him monuments by and by, because he is dead, and it won't do 
him any good. They trode him under foot, when he was alive, 
he was so far " before the Age," and called him crazy ! Mono- 
maniac, I suppose they called him. One poor man got the no- 
tion, some ages ago, that the sun didn't whirl round the Earth — 
but that it was more likely and reasonable that the appearances 
that looked as if it did, were brought about by the Earth's turn- 
ing round on its own axletree. They come nigh hanging or 
burning him for it. They let him off, I believe, on the ground 
of insanity. They made him give it up, though — publicly — to 
save his life. The Sole?)ms got hold of him — the Reverejid Di- 
vines — God's specially called, ordained and set-apart ministers — 
chosen of God to guide the people to Heaven. They must know 
all about the sun and stars and things up the firmament — for they 
are guides to Heaven. They said it was contrary to the inspired 
Book, to say the Sun stood still, and the Earth whirled round. It 
was contrary to " Joshua." So they made the man take it back. 
They are a Icnoioing people, these Divines. They are specially 



310 "YOU ARE BEFORE THE ACE." 

gifted of God. They c«?^'^ mistake. They were with the Age. 
This crazy man was " hefore tlie Age" — noxo, it is admitted by 
the very Solcmns, themselves, that the earth whirls over, every 
twenty-four hours, and the sun i& still as a mouse, li^he Solanns 
always admit things, after " the Age" has adopted them. They 
are as careful about the Age as the weather-cock is about the 
wind. They never mistake it. You might as well catch an old, 
experienced weather-cock, on some ancient orthodox steeple — 
mistaking the way of the wind — standing all day with its tail 
east, in a strong out wind, as the Divines at odds with " the Age." 
They can smell " the Age." They taste it, at any rate. 

I say the Priesthood is a mischievous order of men, and totally 
unwarranted by Christianity, to boot. Well, that is " before the 
Age." True, it is — but why can't " the Age" just examine it, 
and see if it isn't true. I have examined it, and find it true, 
as I think. I say so. They cry out, that I am " before the Age," 
and must be scowled down. Garrison was " before the Age" 
when he denounced Colonization, and went for the immediate 
abolition of Slavery. The Age is now getting up with him, 
and Reform getting hy him — and if he does not upset himself by 
his Presidency and conservatism, they will build him a monument 
before the century is out. They will, before five and twenty years. 
And they will, however he may now bear himself. He has won 
the glory of anti-slavery pioneership, and can't forfeit it. But he 
has got to rest his fame on what is now past. He is pioneer no 
longer. He is President of the A?nerican Anti-Slavery Society. 
He goes for civil war between the States. He writes war songs, 
to set " Old Massachusetts" at war with South Carolina. Like 
the fiery ditty that came out in the papers about the time of the 
boundary line difficulties in Maine. Mr. Garrison used to be 
" before the Age" — but he is getting to be about abreast of it. 
Not quite sane enough, to be adopted among the Whig aristoc- 
racy of Boston. His vronomania is of too recent a date for that. 
He has worn it off in some measure, but can't be depended on. 
It may return. " Once" crazy — " always suspected." 

"■ Before the Age." Well it can't be helped. These " restless 
devils," as a very respectable acquaintance called me a short 



ARISTOCRACY. 317 



time since, are of necessity before the Age, as the horses are 
before the cart, or the locomotive ahead of the cars. They have 
to drag the Age — and therefore must go " before" it. The Age 
can't be pushed. It must be pulled. Shame on the louts that 
ride and curse their horses — or rave at the steam that draws 
them. And triple shame on the worse than louts, who hang 
back — trig the wheels — lay things across the track to throw the 
Engine off, and after all, ride, on behind. If the Age is not up 
to its duty, every friend of his race ought to be " before the Age." 
If the Age is not what it should be — how shall it be advanced ? 
By every man's keeping back, with it, and stigmatizing and dis- 
couraging those who would advance it ? Can there be reform, 
if nobody begins it ? Will the Age advance without the peo- 
ple ; or will the people advance simultaneously, without some 
"monomaniac" to go ahead? 

The divine and the statesman expend their energies in keeping 
the Age where it is. Their policy is to study the Age and to 
keep it from advancement. They familiarize themselves with 
its follies, and thrive by playing upon them. To reform the 
people of those follies, is to endanger the Divines' and states- 
men's craft. The follies of the people are the food of the Politi- 
cian and the Priest. Hence they are the deadly enemies of Re- 
form — always. The Priests divinely hostile, the Politicians, only 
humanly so. One arrays against the Reformer, the terrors of, 
the Law — the other, the terrors of the Lord. 



ARISTOCRACY. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of May 23, 1845.] 

Let me give it an off-hand blow, here. Hateful, heartless 
Aristocracy. I detest it above all things. I was subjected to its 
bloated frown, when I was a boy — and I have a very early, if not 
a native, inborn abhorrence of it. It has no idea you have any 
rights or any feelings. You do not belong to the same race with 
your paltry, uppish Aristocrat. He does not associate with you, 
27* 



318 ARISTOCRACY. 



when you are with him. He makes use of you. He does not 
recognize you as a party in interest in what is going on. You 
are no more a companion to him, than his horse or his dog — and 
you are no more than a dog or horse, if you condescend to be 
of his association. He belongs to the Jirst families. By first 
here, is meant last and least in every thing honorable to human- 
ity. First in idleness — first in indulgence, first in scorn of hu- 
manity. Sometimes you. will find it happening amid the ranks 
of humanity and reform. It is when it is eccentric and ill bal- 
anced, that it strays in there. It will keep its eccentricity — but 
not part with its haughtiness. One day or other it will break out. 
King Richard could carouse and fight by the side of Robin Hood 
and the outlaws of Sherwood forest — but every now and then, 
outlawed freedom would tread on the toe of Majesty, and Regal- 
ity would show its claws and teeth. Richard was an odd King — 
and went among the brave outlaws, and fought on foot among 
them. But when Outlawry took the liberty to speak to him, on 
even terms of fellow-soldiership, it roused the Lion in him, and 
he roared and shook his mane. Aristocracy has none of the Lion 
in it — but it feels bigger than a whole den of Lions. You must 
beware of it. You can't live with it. It regards every thing 
allowed you, as an allowance — a favor. You have no rights. If 
you receive any thing, you must do homage for it. 

Now I like refinement — and dislike coarseness and grossness. 
I am disgusted at dirtiness of spirit. But I abominate uppish- 
ness. I like washed hands — but not these " dainty fingers." 
Cleanliness and elegance, to any extent, and the refined and 
delicate taste. These are often united with yeomanly nature — 
with freedom from all superciliousness and self-worship — and I 
love them. But this Aristocracy, I will not tolerate or endure. 
I have not the slightest respect for it. I will not treat it courte- 
ously even. I will not treat it at all. I will not have it about. 
Out of the way with it — and out of the world. It is the very 
genius of this accursed slave-mastery. You have got to be a 
slave to it. 

It comes by birth. It comes by money. It comes of idleness, 
even. It is engendered by trade, and by ofl[ice. Old wealth, 



ARISTOCRACY. 319 



however, breeds it the most grossly and offensively — a generation 
or two of homage paid by poverty to bloated opulence, will breed 
it — the worst Icind. It will turn up the nose of the third or fourth 
generation, along — so that it can hardly smell common folks, as 
they go on the ground. You can tell its nose and upper lip, as 
far as you can see them. And there is a dreadful dianpsy daisy 
look about the eyes and eyebrows. As much as to say, " I care 
considerably less than nothing about ycli." And the voice too — 
it is amazing peculiar. 

Now, any body may be as well born as they've a mind to. 
My father was a gentleman, as they call it — and a scholar. A 
good deal of a scholar. And he was educated. And was of 
Harvard College — not poor New Hampshire Dartmouth. Har- 
vard College of Massachusetts. And he was of the learned pro- 
fession! And his father was a learned divine, and his grand- 
father — and great-grandfather — and I don't know how far back. 
One of them, not far back, was President of Harvard College — 
and back farther yet, one was burnt at the stake. I am well de- 
scended enough, for's I know, but somehow, it never made n.e 
despise any body. I never could help seeing equal humanity in 
every living creature, however poor and forlorn. And my father 
did before me. Perhaps, if he had been an Aristocrat, I should 
have been one. But he had too much sense. Too much real 
character and manhood. I am half inclined to think, I have. 
That is — I haven't a vein or an iota of uppish blood in me — and 
it must be owing to somethivg. I haven't any superfluity of 
sense, — but — too much to be an Aristocrat. Finally, it doesn't 
take much, to be an Aristocrat. I guess Aristocracy is lach of 
sense, as much as any thing. Sense — of a certain sort — may 
accompany it, — or be in the same creature. But it is a senseless 
concern — and moreover — superlatively hateful Above all pla- 
ces, Anti-Slavery is the last place where it ought to be caught. 
Let it keep out of the Anti-Slavery ranks. If it has strayed in 
there, it had better be out again. They cannot coalesce — or 
live together, and it will seduce the firmest Anti-Slavery spirits 
to betray the cause. For Aristocracy has something at stake, 
which Anti-Slavery endangers, and will eventually abolish. As 



320 THE LEARNED BLACKSMITH. 

soon as it discovers the danger, it will bolt and betray the move- 
ment. With the Aristocrat, Humanity is nothing. With Anti- 
Slavery, Humanity is every thing. 



THE LEARNED BLACKSMITH. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of June 6, 1845.] 

I MET with him for the first time, at Boston, — and the Learned 
Blacksmith is a man big enough to entitle your first interview 
with him to remembrance. Elihu Burritt is a great man. What 
his defects are, I cannot say — but he has great talents. He is a 
great orator. At least he has made one great speech in his life, 
if no more, and that, I heard, before about a single handful of 
people, in a partly lit hall, down under the Marlborough Chapel. 
It was at a Peace meeting. I was passing up to the Chapel, with 
W^illiam B. Towne and John R. French, the last evening of the 
New England Convention — the hall door was open as we were 
passing it, and we discovered the form of the Learned Black- 
smith, on the little Platform, by the side of Samuel E. Coues and 
the celebrated Robert Owen. For Robert Owen is now allowed 
a place on Philanthropy's chief seats, in the capital of puritan 
New England. A few years ago, and they would much sooner 
have admitted the — I don't know who. A great mark of the 
progress of freedom and righteousness. The Clergy think as 
much now, I guess, of keeping their own platform-footing, as of 
disturbing Robert Owen's. I had be.en introduced to Elihu Bur- 
ritt, the day before — and was much interested in his original 
appearance, and desirous of knowing him further. I had not 
formed the highest opinion of his liberality, from some passages 
between his " Christian Citizen" and the Herald of Freedom. 
My companions and I turned into the hall to hear him speak a 
little, before going up into the great Convention overhead. But 
we soon forgot — I did — every thing but the speaker before me. 
The dim-lit hall — the handful audience — the contrast of both 
with the illuminated chapel, and ocean multitude assembled over 



THE LEARNED BLACKSMITH. 821 

head — l)csj)eak painfully the estimation in which the great cause 
of Peace i« held in Christendom. I wish all Christendom could 
have heard Elihu Burritt's speech. One unbroken, unabated 
stream it was, of profound and lofty and original eloquence. I 
fell riveted to my seat till he finished it. There was no oratory 
about it, in the ordinary sense of that word — no graces of elocu- 
tion. It was mighty thoughts radiating off from his heated mind, 
hke the sparkles from the glowing steel on his own anvil — getting 
on, as they come out, what clothing of language they might, and 
thus having on the most appropriate and expressive imaginable. 
Not a waste word, nor a wanting one. And he stood and de- 
livered himself in the simplicity and earnestness of attitude and 
gesture, belonging to his manly, and now honored and distin- 
guished trade. I admired to witness the touch of rusticity in his 
accent, amid his truly splendid diction, which betokened, as well 
as the vein of solid sense that run entirely through his speech, that 
he had not been ed cated at the college. I thought of Plough- 
man Burns, as I listened to Blacksmith Burritt. Oh what a dig- 
nity and beauty Labor imparts to learning ! 

I do not know that this was sample of Elihu Burritt's oratory. 
If it was, I was wondering I had not heard him spoken of as the 
eloquent "Blacksmith," as well as the "learned." I can think 
of nothing now that could have specially inspired him that even- 
ing — unless it was his lack of audience, and the bedlam " pother" 
that every now and then thundered over head. He had no rhe- 
toric — no rounded, sounding insignificant periods — no beautiful, 
unmeaning words. It was all meaning. 

He said men would evade the prohibitions of the gospel of 
Chris , and fight for Life. Self-defence — if they couldn't find 
the right of it in the gospel, they would gather it farther back. 
They would fight for life. And if for life, certainly, for any thing 
dearer than life. Liberty was dearer than life. They would, of 
course, fight for liberty. And there was something dearer than 
1 berty and life, and without which these were nothing. It was 
Honor. In defence of Honor. And there was reputation for 
Courage — to avoid the imputation of Cowardice. If England, 
for instance, bade us not' enter Canada — we must go to Canada, 



322 IT RAINS. 

to escape the imputation of refraining for fear of England. And 
we invade Canada. And what was honor, or liberty — or life — or 
any thing without Property. We must fight if property is in- 
vaded, and if for any amount of it, then for every amount, how- 
ever trifling, or we abandoned the right. If we would fight for 
Oregon, he said, why then we must for the loneliest dead pine, 
that stood on the remotest cliff of the peaks of the Rocky Moun- 
tains. He glanced magnificently at the career of Napoleon — and 
touched on Waterloo with a fancy scarcely short of Childe Har- 
old's, and when too he was tracing the hosts that encountered 
there in the high and terrible strife for glory — he followed them 
from the field of Waterloo, to the corn fields of old England, 
where their bones, after long whitening on the plain where they 
fell — gathered by peasant hands — were ground to powder, and 
strewed as base manure, to raise a crop of corn, instead of a 
harvest of renown. 

I can give no sketch of his speech — but it was very original 
and impressive, and would be a valuable one to read — and has 
convinced me Elihu Burritt is a great " Blacksmith" in other 
respects than " learning." 



IT RAINS. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of July 4, 1845.] 

While I am writing, it is raining most magnificently and glo- 
riously, out doors. It absolutely roars, it comes down in such 
multitude and big drops. And how refreshing ! It waters the 
earth. There has been but little rain, and our sandy region had 
got to looking dry and distressed. Every thing looks encouraged 
now, as the great strainer over head is letting down the shower 
bath. The grass darkens, as it drinks it in, with a kind of deli- 
cate satisfaction. And the trees stand and take it, as a cow does 
a carding. They hold as still as a mouse, while they " abide its 
peltings," not moving a twig, or stirring a leaf. The dust of the 
wide naked street is transmuted into mud. And the stages sound 



IT RAINS. 303 

over the road, as if they rattled on naked pavement. Puddles 
stand in all the hollows. You can hardly see the people for um- 
brellas — and the clouds look as if they had not done with us. 
The prospect for the Canterbury meeting looks loxcery. Let it 
rain. All for the best. It is extraineous, but I could hardly help 
noticing the great Rain and saying this word about it. I think 
the more mankind regard these beautiful doings in Nature, the 
more they will regard each other, and love each other, and the 
less inclined to — enslave each other. The readier abolitionists 
they will become. And the better. The Rain is a great Anti- 
Slavery discourse. And I like to have it pour. No eloquence is 
richer to my spirit, or music. A thunder shower, what can match 
it for eloquence and poetry ! That rush from heaven of the big 
drops — in what multitude and succession, and how they sound as 
they strike ! How they play on the old home roof and on the 
thick tree tops ! What music to go to sleep by, to a tired boy as 
he lays under the naked roof! And the great low bass thunder 
as it rolls off over the hills and settles down behind them — to the 
very centre, and you can feel the old Earth jar under your feet — 
that is music and poetry and life. And if the Lightning strikes 
you — what of that ! It won't liurt you. " Favored man," truly, 
as uncle Pope says, " by touch ethereal slain." A light touc.'i, 
compared to Disease's, the Doctor's — or Poverty's. I am no 
trifler with human destiny — but nothing that naturally happens 
to man, can hurt him. Earthquakes and thunder storms not ex- 
cepted. Fear makes some things look unkindly — but live right, 
and it " casteth out fear," and Nature won't hurt any body, or 
any thing. If the People won't hurt themselves or one another, 
God never will hurt them. God is the People's friend. 



324 THE LEGISLATURE. 

THE LEGISLATURE. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of July 11, 1845.] 

It has just burst here, and dispersed. It has scattered this 
morning, (Thursday,) after a day-break session, long enough to 
entitle the guardians of the People's rights and interests to a 
day's pay out of the State's money. It is the State's, and there- 
fore costs nobody any thing. Early enough this morning, they 
held a session, to not encroach on the day, which is devoted to 
their travel home. They are paid for their travel, as well as for 
their sitting, on this day. It is, as it were, two days ; a day of 
legislative sitting, and also of legislative not sitting, but motion — 
travel. A day of travail and travel, both. They have two dol 
lars apiece, the legislators, for one of the two days, and I don't 
know how much, (I used to know) for every mile's travel home, 
on the other. It costs the People nothing, for the money is taken 
out of the State Treasury, and the Legislature supply that, by 
legislation, without the labor or care of any body. They raise 
the money, by sort of yeas and nays — as we say " raise the wind" 
— " raise the d — 1" — " raise Cain" — or " corn." They " raised 
$60,000" of it, at one lift, this time they have been together. 
And it is theirs, and they are entitled to it. They took a Ben- 
jamin's mess of it, this morning. 

They are gone. I miss them a good deal. My garret window 
(and I do not have to open it to look out — it is pretty much open 
already) looks right out upon the great State House Yard, where 
they used to swarm, coming out. I go through it — going home. 
1 shall miss the squads of members standing ruminating, legis- 
latively, by the gravelled paths — ruminating and nominating at 
corners — or on the flights of steps up to the State House. I 
used to hear as I passed near the House, the sonorous eloquence 
of some orator in debate. I shall miss it now — and the long rows 
of hats in the great windows — all gone — all still. The yard de- 
serted — the great stone edifice left to the Chimney Swallows, (a 
quorum of these, all summer) a Secretary or two, and some other 
officers of State. 



THE LEGISLATURE. 325 

Well, they have held a Session. They have legislated. They 
had a Governor — who had his Council. They sat and deliberated 
and governed. I saw the Governor and his Councillors. They 
looked same as any body. A little gravish — not much. They 
laughed, I saw, some of them. Bought apples of the boys at the 
State House door — eat them — spit round on the steps — same as 
any body. The Legislature spit a good deal. The stone steps 
are pretty much stained with it, a kind of tobacco color, where 
they went in and out. And little wads lying about, the size of 
these dorbugs — looking as if the General Court had been chew- 
ing upon them. All gone now, and it won't cost a ten dollar bill 
to clean all up, and make it as wholesome as it was before the 
session. They have really done the People service — no dispute. 
They took the yeas and nays, a number of times to my know- 
ledge. I went into the gallery up above, a number of times, — a 
place prepared for idle and for low-spirited people to go to — and 
I looked down and saw what they did. They took the yeas and 
nays of the entire body, several times. Once they got them 
wrong, and the head man declared the count both ways — once, 
for, and once, against. They rectified it, though. All these 
yeas and nays are kept a record of, for the public use. And they 
give the go-by to several laws, that sounded to me as if they 
would have been very bad ones, if they had passed. They con- 
trived to " postpone" them " indefinitely," as tiiey called it — which 
I imagine means putting them by pretty permanently — at least for 
the present, and till another session comes round. Oh they do a 
good deal for the public. If it hadn't been for them, those laws 
would not have been " indefinitely postponed." They couldn't 
have been. Nobody but the General Court has the power to 
postpone a law indefinitely. The people couldn't get a bill " in- 
definitely postponed," if it wan't for this General Court. It is a 
very rare power, as well as a salutary. I thought I should like to 
see them postpone some more of their bills. 

But then we must have laws. And we must have fresh ones. 

They must be made, or touched over, every year, or they would 

grow stale and common. The people would find them out, after 

a while, and would lose their respect for them. They don't know 

28 



SQ6 THE LEGISLATURE. 



any thing about them, now, and have a great respect for them, 
and place great reliance on them. The Lawyers know all about 
them, and so do the Judges. 

They passed one law, pretty nearly, I am just told, doing away 
with Great Trainings. They didn't quite pass it. It wasn't 
"indefinitely postponed" — but then the Governor got the bill, 
and carried it away with him in his pocket. Another way they 
have of preventing the passage of a bad law, and shows the im- 
portance of having Governors. If we hadn't had a governor, the 
bill destroying the trainings couldn't have been prevented, in this 
vmy, from becoming a law, and we should have had no more 
Musters. Now we shall have Musters. It is a great thing, to 
have Governors. The Governor, I am told, put that bill into his 
pocket, and that stopped it at once from becoming a law. For a 
bill, if it has passed ever so many Houses, is no more a law when 
it gets into a Governor's pocket, than so much white paper. And 
the Houses can't get it out again, either of them — nor both of 
them. Not, if they were unanimous and concurred, both. If it 
gets into the Governor's pocket, they never can get it out again. 
And he can pocket all the bills they can make. And if he should 
take it into his head to, they couldn't pass any laws. They give 
him about $1000 or $1200 a year, the Governor. The People 
don't have it to pay. It comes out of the State Treasury. Poli- 
tics costs the Treasury some $100,000, a year here — the State 
politics. If the People had it to pay, it would come hard. The 
State's share of National politics costs a great deal more than 
$100,000. But that is paid by a fore-handed old gentleman of 
the name of " Uncle Sam." Richer he is than Jacob Astor. He 
pays all the national expense. It would be terrible if the people 
had to pay it. That, and the State's together, would be more 
than the people could possibly pay. They would sink down un- 
der it. Now they get rid of it all. Old Uncle Sam pays the 
National bills, and the State bills are paid out of the State 
Treasury — money raised by the General Court. 



"HIGH ROCK." 327 



"HIGH ROCK," 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Aug. 15, 1845.] 

The name of a commanding prominence in rear of the town 
of Lynn, Mass. It overlooks the town and the ocean, and a 
great distance up and down the coast — as well as far back into 
the country. The view from it is very extensive, varied, and 
striking. I do not remember such a view, from any point so easy 
of ascent. I went to the top of the Rock, the other day, when 
I was at Lynn, with my beloved friend, Jesse Hutchinson, Jr., 
to see the spot he has chosen, and the beginning he is making, 
for the site of a Cottage. He has obtained title to the summit 
of High Rock, and of the ground at the foot of it, where, if he 
succeeds, he will have an unrivaled spot. The Rock ascends 
nearly perpendicularly, some forty or fifty feet. At the foot of 
it, on the south-east side, spreads a patch of good ground for a 
building and garden — of, I should judge, a quarter or third of 
an acre. It then pitches off precipitously in front, some hundreds 
of feet to the level of the town below. On the sides it is acces- 
sible by carriage road, up one side of which, a road is already 
constructed. Jesse has dug a well and found abundance of living 
water, on a spot pointed out to him by a clairvoyant friend. This 
encouraged him to dig, when all the waking and seeing people 
told him it would be in vain to hunt for water at such a height. 
On the right of his level plat, in front, rises a splendid round 
rock some ten or dozen feet, on which to plant a little Summer 
House. The Cottage is intended to be of stone, of which there 
appears to be an abundant quarry, and of beautiful quality, on 
the very spot he wants to level for its site. Jesse is a Poet — but 
he can build songs, he will find, easier than he can Stone Cot- 
tages, in this flinty, hard-money world, and among the cliffs of 
High Rock. If he succeeds in this design, though, he will have 
a Home there like a Song. It will look off, over Lynn with her 
ten thousand people, on to the main Ocean — unobstructed on 
either hand as far as eye can reach. Egg Rock lays in the midst 
of the sea-prospect — and the ragged cliffs of Nahant. And it is 



,3-28 "HIGH ROCK. 



within roar as well as sight, of the sea-beaten Beach, one of the 
finest on the Ocean's margin — the Beach stretching more than a 
mile, level and smooth as a house floor, and solid as a pavement. 
A fine race-ground for horses and carriages, which swarm it like 
flies — certain times of day, in the hot season. It would be most 
magnificent to see a storm break upon it, from the Cottage at 
High Rock. Jesse means to cover the whole precipice of the 
Rock behind the Cottage, with one mammoth Grape Vine. It 
would be as sunny there, for the grapes, as Italy, or any of the 
vineyard-slopes of France. Off South you can see Bunker Hill 
Monument — its great, solemn shaft of gray towering in the haze 
and smoke of Boston, and the State House dome looming just 
beyond it, and surmounting the city — all in plain sight from the 
cottage window, by and bye, when Jesse has one. To the north- 
east, the Ocean House, and Marblehead and Cape Ann — and 
from the top of the Rock, the high mountains of western Massa- 
chusetts. And Jesse means in his heart, to pile a tower of rude 
stone on the summit of High Rock — some five and twenty or thirty 
feet high, with an Observatory in the top, where he will have a 
telescope, and the poetical creature indulges his fancy so far as to 
whisper he will have a chime of Bells there ! I wish to Heaven 
he had the means. He would make High Rock the tallest affair 
on New England's " rock-bound coast." And how sweet to sit 
in the cottage piazza, of a summer night, and hear those sweet 
Bells chime in answer to the moaning Sea below upon the Beach. 
And the whole enhanced and surpassed some nighi, by the song 
of " The Hutchinsons" themselves — his matchless brother-band 
(" v/ith a sister in it,") there from their own rocks of " the Old 
Granite State." Apropos — I propose here, they give Jesse a 
Benefit or two, to be laid out in completing and embellishing the 
Cottage on High Rock, in a manner that shall correspond with 
his genius, and be worthy their own peerless Song. It wouldn't 
be the first time — at least in fable — that architecture has sprung 
into existence at the sound of Music. 

I say this much of High Rock, and its contemplated Cottage. 
The reader will indulge me in it, in tribute of respect to our 
Anti-Slavery duire, and to their gifted brother who has given 



LETTER FROM PLYMOUTH. 309 

US the finest songs of the Anti-Slavery Movement, as well as 
being one of the most devoted abolitionists, and most eloquent 
advocates of free speech. 



LETTER FROM PLYMOUTH. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 12, 1845.] 

Dear J. — Lest I should be detained over another Herald, here, 
I employ a few hours of this holy day, when nothing secular can 
be done, in preparing my quota to the paper. I am in consider- 
able hopes to save you the five cents for its postage, by myself 
being its post-boy. I suppose it is no punishable violation of the 
Law, to carry your own letters, in the mail stage. If it be — and 
I should do it — this " developement" may be used in evidence 
against me — for I certainly will carry this to you, to-morrow, if I 
go home. 

I went a jaunt, Thursday last, about twenty miles north of this 
valley — into the mountain region — where, what I beheld, if I 
could tell it as I saw it, would make your outlawed sheet sought 
after wherever our Anglo-Saxon tongue is spoken in the wide 
world. I have been many a time among those Alps — and never 
without a kindling of wildest enthusiasm in my woodland blood. 
But I never smo them till last Thursday. They never loomed 
distinctly to my eye before, and the sun never shone on them from 
heaven till then. They were so near me, I could seem to hear 
the voice of their cataracts — as I could count their great Slides — 
streaming adown their lone and desolate sides. Old Slides, some 
of them, overgrown with young woods, like half-healed scars on 
the breast of a giant. The great rains had clothed the valleys of 
the upper Pemigewassett in the darkest and deepest green. The 
meadows were richer and more glorious, in their thick " fall feed," 
than " Queen Anne's Garden," — as I saw it from the windows of 
Windsor Castle. And the dark Hemlock and Hacmatac woods 
were yet darker after the wet season, as they lay, in a hundred 
wildernesses, in the mighty recesses of the mountains. But the 
28* 



330 LETTER FROM TLYMOUTH. 

Peaks — the eternal, the solitary — the beautiful, the glorious and 
dear mountain peaks, my own Moosehillock and my native " Hay- 
stacks," these were the things on which eye and heart gazed and 
lingered, and I seemed to see them for the last time. It was on 
my way back, that I halted and turned to look at them, from a 
high point on the Thornton road. It was about four in the after- 
noon. It had rained among the hills about the " Notch," and 
cleared off. The sun, there sombered, at that early hour, as to- 
wards his setting, was pouring his most glorious light upon the 
naked Peaks, and they casting their mighty shadows far down 
among the inaccessible woods that darken the hollows that stretch 
between their bases. A cloud was creeping up to perch and rest 
awhile on the highest top of " Great Haystack." Vulgar folks 
have called it Mount Lafayette, since the visit of that brave old 
Frenchman, in '25 or 6. If they had asked his opinion, he would 
have told them, the names of mountains couldn't be altered — and 
especially names like that — so appropriate — so descriptive and so 
picturesque. A little, hard white cloud — that looked like a hun- 
dred fleeces of wool rolled into one — was climbing rapidly along 
up the north-western ridge, that ascended to the lonely top of 
" Great Haystack." All the others were bare. Four or five of 
them — as distinct and shapely as so many Pyramids — some topped 
out with naked cliff", on which the sun lay in melancholy glory — 
others clothed thick all the way up with the old New Hampshire 
hemlock ; or the daring hacmatac. Pierpont's " Hacmatac." 
You could see their shadows stretching many and many a mile, 
over " Grant" and " Location," — away beyond the invading foot 
of Incorporation — where the timber-hunter has scarcely explored, 
and where the Moose browses now, I suppose, as undisturbed as 
he did, before the settlement of the State. I wish our young 
friend and genius, Harrison Eastman, had been with me, to see 
the sun-light, as it glared on the tops of those woods — and to see 
the purple of the mountains. I looked at it, myself, almost with 
the eye of a painter. If a painter looked with mine, though, he 
never could look off", upon his canvass, long enough to make a 
picture. He would gaze forever at the original. 

But I had to leave it — and to say in my heart, farewell ! And 



LETTER FROM PLYMOUTH. 331 

as I travelled on down, and the sun sunk lower and lower towards 
the summit of the western ridge, the clouds came up and formed 
an Alpine range in the evening heavens, above it-^like other 
Haystacks and Moosehillocks — so dark and dense, that fancy 
could easily mistake them for a higher Alps. There were the 
peaks, and the great passes — the Franconia " Notches" among 
the cloudy cliffs, and the great White Mountain " Gap." All that 
was lacking was a thunder-storm among them, which I couldn't 
help wishing might be got up, before we reached Plymouth — 
tiiough it was coming night, and I had been all the day before 
confined to the bed of an attack of fever. It was an ominous 
wish, and perhaps a rash one — for before we got within three 
miles of shelter — in an open buggy — and without even an um- 
brella, there were musterings for a thunder-storm in more than 
one quarter of the sky. It was dusk when we crossed " Liver- 
more's Bridge," at a wild, craggy narrows on the Pemigewassett. 
The view opens below the bridge between high cliffs on each side 
of the stream — and as we got about half way across, a flash of 
lightning from the southern horizon, gleamed on the long stretch 
of river mirrored below, with almost intolerable brightness. As 
we ascended the hill on tlie opposite side, came the thunder — 
and when we reached the top, we descried a battery niovinor 
rapidly over the bridge to the north-west — of thick, dark cloud, 
cleft with frequent flashes of lightning. It lightened, too, vividly 
and frequently in the South, so that we were between two fires, 
and the prospect was of winding off the day and the ride in a 
magnificent storm, and war of the elements. The clouds in the 
north-west, rose rapidly — as if driven by a hurricane, and a long 
line of battle underneath them, showed the edge of the shower. 
We were protected by the hills, and felt no wind. A half-mile 
from the Plymouth village (where onct I had a home,) is the 
" Baker's River Bridge." (The world will know all about these 
localities, by and bye, when the Rail Road to Canada, traverses 
this valley.) We had got on to the Bridge, when, looking back, 
we discovered the rain had reached the nearest hills, and was 
already mingling with their tree tops, and was coming on at a 
rapidity from which we could scarcely escape. It was so grand 



332 "THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY. 

and inagniticeiit, the whole array of night and storm, that un- 
fitted as I was to encounter them, I did not, for a moment, 
regret being out. We rode rapidly however. The storm pur 
sued us. The great vanguard cloud advancing distinctly before 
it, upright in tlie western heavens, like the keel of a mighty 
Steamer. As we entered the village, the hurricane from the hills 
struck down before us upon the road, and whirled a cloud of dust 
into the air — so we couldn't see our way. The big rain drops 
immediately followed, and we were at once in the thick of a tre- 
mendous thunder-storm. I have scarcely ever known it rain 
heavier — or a higher wind, or more sudden and violent tempest. 
We were out in it just long enough to witness its onset, and have 
a taste of its power. 

I shouldn't have undertaken any thing, so much like descrip- 
tion, as tills, with my disheartened and o'erjaded pen. Time 
was, I could have enjoyed such exhibition of the elements, and 
Iiave given some tame story of it, as it befel — but 

"My visions flit l^ss palpably before iiie," — now, 
'-and imagination droops her pinion." 

I hardly dare venture a quotation. To avoid further hazard, 
I will even close my doujjtful epistle — for which, if I can, I will 
substitute you son:ething else — from yours, and our dear friends, 
the readers, N. P. R. 



"THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY." 

[I-'rom the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 12, 1!M3.] 

GEorKjE Bradbukn bade me do two things-^-if I received a 
copy of Lysander Spooner's Essay — with the above title — viz. 
Read it all — and notice it in the Herald of Freedom. I would 
have readily done more than both, were it only to please so noble 
a heart as George Bradburn — who has been very boardhj treated, 
by the way, by the Regency at Boston, who have the keeping of 
Garrison. I regretted Bradburn's estimation of Politics as an 
instrumentality for the advancement of the Anti-Siavery cause 



"THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY." 333 

and his active enlistment in the Liberty Party. I don't know 
but I may have spoken unduly of him, when I found hiai de- 
fining his position politically. If I did, I will do him more than 
justice. I guess I didn't — for I do not remember ever doubting 
his right to form his own opinions and choose his own instru- 
mentalities and measures. There was never to my remembrance 
a particle of " New Organization" in George Bradburn's noble 
nature or conduct — my ground of quarrel with the origination of 
the Liberty Party. So far as it was a device of clerical abolition- 
ism, to divert the Anti-Slavery storm from the Church, I quar- 
relled with it, and will quarrel — but with it as a mere political 
party — aiming sincerely for the overthrow of slavery, I have no 
contest, though I do not sympEthize with this mode of action. 
George Bradburn is an abolitionist, of faithful, disinterested and 
much sacrificing caste, and has undergone characteristic treat- 
ment from the Board for venturing to be independent. 

I have complied with one of his requisitions, as to Lysander 
Spooner's able pamphlet. I have read it. That is, run through 
it — and actually and thinkingly read most of it. I know what it 
is. I will now, as well as I can, comply with the other. Give it 
a Herald-of-Freedom-sort of notice. It is a laborious book to 
read. Not tedious, but laborious and toilsome. You have to 
think, as you read it. You have to read it with mind. The 
writer wrote it so, and you have to read it so. He thought, all 
the way through it. There are no mindless passages in it — no 
spots where thought failed the author, and his pen went on with- 
out. It is all connected keen argument, the entire way through — 
argument and fact. 

His glorious definition of Law — " Natural Right," — " Natural 
Justice." I apprehend he has pitched it too high. So high, it 
will exclude not only Slavery, but citizenship and subject. Ex- 
clude Government, and Law itself. Blackstone Law. That de- 
mands of you, that you give it up part of your Natural Rights, 
(to wit, all of them) to purchase of it, protection of the rest. 
Spooner's Law secures to the Individual, all natural rights, and 
is, itself, the Law of Nature. That Law, of course prohibits 
Slavery, and if nothing short of it is Law. if all natural injustice 



334 " THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY." 

is illegal, then Slavery is unconstitutional, allowing the Consti- 
tution, to be the Laiv of the land. 

The Essay purges the Law of the country, of Slavery, in the 
days of the Colonies, before the Revolution. It shows the Law 
of England to be the Law Paramount here, then, and the decision 
of Mansfield, in the famous Somerset Case, was a besom, to sweep 
Slavery from legal existence, any where in the Colonies. " Slaves 
couldn't" lawfully " breathe in" America — any more than, ac- 
cording to Chief Justice Cowper, they could in " England." The 
Colonial Statutes, it acquits of Slavery, too, and pretty nearly, or 
quite, the Old Articles of Confederation. Though, I think the 
Old Articles — where they speak of " Free" people, in distinction 
from certain others — knew there were slaves in the country, and 
meant to recognize them. 

The Declaration of '76, — so far as that made up the Law — and 
I don't know but it was about all " the Rebels" had — at one time, 
they said they held to it, at any rate. That would seem to con- 
flict with such an inequality as Slavery. But the Constitution, 
the grand national Charter, the Paramount Parchment of the 
Land, is that pro-slavery or not — or is slavery constitutional or 
not, that is the point, the Essay aims to establish. With defer- 
ence to Mr. Spooner, as a hundred times the Lawyer, I ever was, 
I would take the liberty to say, that showing the illegality of 
Slavery, before the Revolution, or before the adoption of the 
Constitution, in '89, is not material to interpreting the letter and 
spirit of the Constitution itself That speaks, for itself as inde- 
pendently of former or existing Law, as of contemporaneous his- 
tory. What did words mean about those days, and what does the 
Constitution say, it seems to me, are the considerations to settle 
its meaning. The doctrine of the Essay as to legal principles of 
construction — and interpretation, would bother the old Parch- 
ment, and make it hang its head, if it undertook to catch a run- 
away slave, or prohibit Congress abolishing s^ai'e-trades — or base 
its representations, in Congress, on slaves, as three-fifths men. 
Still, I think the old thing does it. Mr. Spooner makes out, 
that " in the gross and scope" of the Constitution and Law, they 
are at odds enough with Slavery, yet I think, the stately old 



"THE UNCOiNSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY." 335 

Parchment does connive at it. That it explicitly contemplates a 
three-fifths representation for the southern slaves ; that it pro- 
hibited Congress from meddling with the importation of slaves, 
for a period ; and that it means to and does make hunting ground 
of the free States, for the chase of runaway slaves. It, at least, 
as the cant phrase is — don't do ani/ thing else, than these three 
things, in the several clauses where it touches the subject. In 
the " no person held to service or labor" clause — the " service" 
spoken of, seems to me, that of a slave if of any body. Nobody 
else is " held to service," but a slave. No contract service is 
compellable of performance. No contract compels a man to 
perform his promised service. The law " holds" him, only in 
damages. The language, I suppose must mean something, how- 
ever unlawful or unjust. That is, the fault of the instrument. It 
speaks of persons " held to service." Nobody is held to service, 
under any contract he can make. If he doesn't perform what 
he promises, he is held to pay only — and not held then to the 
creditor. The creditor can't hold him to pay. He has to ask 
the Law to. He is not " held to service," to any body. To 
" hold him to service," would, itself, make him a slave. 

Held " under the laws." Mr. Spooner denies that any one is 
" held to service in any State, under the laivs thereof,'^ and makes 
it out, I think. But the Constitution don't agree with him. It 
speaks of persons being 50 held. If they are not so held, — the 
more shame to the old parchment, that is all. The Constitution 
says they are. And says further — what it would not say, seems 
to me, of any persons but slaves, or any service, but slave-ser- 
vice — that escaping from it into another State, shall not discharge 
the person from it by virtue of any laws in that State. There is 
no " service a person is holden to, in any State, under the laws 
thereof," from which the laws of any other State would discharge 
him, generally — but slave service. We have slave States and 
non-slave States, but not pay States and non-pay States — contract 
States and non-contract States, The obligations of contract in 
one State, are obligations on the debtor in all other States. But 
the Constitution says there is a service under the Laws of one 
State, from which the Laws of another State will discharge a 



336 " THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY." 

person, if he runs there. This service is no other than slave 
service. Is that, or none. " But shall be delivered up" too, is 
another part of the section. No person is liable by law, to be 
delivered up to a claimant, but a slave. Slave service is not 
legally due — but the Constitution speaks of delivering up to the 
claimant, the person who owes this service. Such person must, 
then, be a slave. I know it makes confounded work with Law. 
So it does with Liberty and life and every thing. But the Con- 
stitution does it, notwithstanding. It talks of persons held to 
service — a service not binding in some of the States, by law, and 
binding in others — and of parsons who may be delivered up to 
their pursuers and claimants of the service. This can only be 
spoken of slaves. And any body of whom it can be spoken, is 
a slave. If the Constitution means any body but the negro slaves, 
then it regards as slaves the white folks of the country. It is an 
enslaving instrument. I think the same may be made out, as to 
the meaning of the other two clauses. They don't mean any 
thing else than slaves. 

It is a splendid Essay. If the talent laid out in it, were laid 
out in the bar, it would make the author distinguished and rich. 
I fear the author is neither. Had he been distinguished, he would 
not have meddled with Slavery. You would not catch Rufus 
Choate, or Richard Fletcher, writing about Slavery. Mr. Fletcher 
once made a speech, in defence of it. But he wouldn't do that, 
now. He would examine the Constitution, in behalf of a fugi- 
tive slave client — but not generally, as Lysander Spooner has 
done — and done greatly. Richard Fletcher is too distinguished. 
This Essay should give the author a name at the Boston Bar. It 
will, at the Bar of Posterity. But the Suffolk pleaders, I sup- 
pose, think it was a weakness in the author to write it. It should 
give him bread. But I fear it will only cost him part of the 
means he may have. It is too philanthropic to sell in Boston, or 
America. 



THE AMERICAN BOARD. 337 



THE AMERICAN BOARD. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Sept. 19, 1845.] 

This great, long-faced, long-waisted. Reverend pile of lumber : 
this cap-sheaf of 6oay(Z-ship, and wooden despotism, and nonsense 
— has had a gathering, at Brooklyn, on Long Island. The Con- 
gregational Journal has a sketch of its solemn doings. The 
D. D.'s {oMckadee-dees) were as thick as hops. They had one 
subject, which stirred some life in their lazy — carcasses. The 
New York Observer calls it " an incidental subject." Of course, 
it was incidental if they took up a subject of the slightest sense or 
importance. Their regular, serious business is as lifeless, as the 
soggy talk of a London Mayor and Aldermen, over a great tor- 
toise dinner. That incidental subject was Slavery. The En- 
!<lavement of portion of the professors of the Religion they are 
exporting to the Heathen, by another portion of them. One part 
of their constituents maJce slaves of the rest. No great affair. 
Not one the Board would ever take notice of They are terribly 
anxious for the moral character of the Heathen, and want to send 
them a religion that will make bereaved widows leave off burning 
themselves on their dead husband's pyre. So horrid an insti- 
tution, this — (together with sundry heresies in their theology) 
that they would suck up, if they could, all the money of the 
country — they would actually reduce the country to beggary — ^to 
send them their own theology through breaches, now, wrought 
in the walls of Heathendom by the infernal broad-sides of the 
Christian Navy of Britain. They would use up, I say, any 
amount of the means of living of this people to send them their 
Andover-made theology. And all the while the solemn creatures 
have a pious constituency here at home, the half of which sells 
the other half, as a jockey sells horses — or a drover, cows, calves, 
pigs and sheep. They baptize them as the representatives of the 
God they pray to — then flog them, sell them — cattlcise them — 
enslave them. A thing — if the Heathen are guilty of — why then, 
the Heathen are as had as this American Board — that is all. 
They meet, this wooden Corpus — and Slaverv, instead of im- 
29 



338 THE AMERICAN BOARD. 

mediately swamping the whole of them in sackcloth and ashes — 
gets before them, incidentally ! 

Amos A. Phelps and David Root were among them. I am 
ashamed of them both for being caught there. They were there 
as memhers ! But they have to recognize these wooden Corpora- 
tions or they would be outlawed. I am sorry they must. If they 
didn't, they couldn't live. They opposed the Board's Report, on 
the incidental subject. I don't see why they should. It was as 
good a report as a Board could make. Any better one would 
tend to upset them. " Self-preservation is" not only the first law 
of Board-ship — but the only law. They ought not to ask a Board 
to make a better report, than the one the seven Solemns made 
for this occasion. Six Solemns, rather, and one Chancellor. It 
amounted, the Report, to a round-about nothing. The merit of 
it was the concealment of the ends of the circle, in which it run. 
It said, their chief business was to save souls, and therefore they 
had nothing to do, with any thing touching live human welfare. 
They were engaged in insuring a man's ghost — his gas — his va- 
por — the mist that exhales when his body dissolves ; securing it 
from the penitential fires, where Hamlet's Father sweat, day times, 
and to which he had to hie, when the " uneffectual fire began to 
pale" in the glow-worm's tail, and the matin to draw nigh. To 
save a man's ether, after it quits his body, from this old popish 
purgatory turned into perpetual imprisonment, was the business 
of the Board — the Report said. That is to say, " it won't noth' 
ing else." For that is the gist of it. It is, what isn't their busi- 
ness — rather than what is — that they are after making out. So 
that they may shirk and steer clear of all human duties. So they 
can control human money and influence, and avoid all labor and 
responsibility. That is their great business. They don't care 
one red copper for mankind's soul — or believe any thing about it, 
or care any thing about it — whether mankind has any soul or 
not. They have a kind of imagination that they care, but they 
don't. I say they don't. And truer words never were spoken. 
They don't care one red cent for the souls of all creation. Rob 
them of one dinner, and they will show you the difference be- 
tween real caring, and what they whiningly profess. They don't 



" THE RIGHTS OF ANIMALS." 339 

care — and they can't care. I don't ask them to care for man- 
kind — soul or body. They are a great wooden Horse — as full of 
sleek, " watery-eyed" knavery, as Hale Pettengill would call it— 
as ever the old Trojan Horse was of armed rascals, en-wombed 
there to sack a city. They are a corporation, hoai'ded up with 
all sorts of lumber sawed from pitch pine — and hemlock, and 
what not, and pretending to be all cut from the Cedars of Leba- 
non. I have no patience, when I think of them. I see through 
them, I think. I wish mankind all did. Poor rogues, they are 
hungry and must eat. They are sensual and must indulge. They 
are proud and lazy, and won't work. Their Report was good 
enough ! 

I am too unwell, to say what I was going to, about them. 



"THE RIGHTS OF ANIMALS." 
P'rom the Herald of Freedom of Oct. 31, 1845.] 

An author in Dublin, gave me, in 1840, a good-sized volume 
of the above title, which alone was merit enough, I thought. — if 
the book had no other, to entitle it and its author to considera- 
tion and gratitude. We hear of the " Rights of Man." I wish 
we heard more of them than we do — and could see them observed 
as well as talked of But who ever thought of an animal's 
rights — the rights of a brute. We hear it spoken of as a man's 
duty to he kind to the brutes — but never of the brute's right to 
just treatment. But why has not a brute rights, as well as men? 
What is the foundation of human rights, that is not foundation, 
for animal rights also? A man has rights— and they are impor- 
tant to him because their observance is necessary to his happi- 
ness, and their violation hurts him. He has a right to personal 
liberty. It is pleasant to him — permanently pleasant and good. 
It is therefore his right. And every creature — or I will call it, 
rather, every existence, (for whether created or not, they certainly 
exist, they are) every existence, that is capable of enjoying or 
suffering, has its rights, and just mankind will regard them. And 



340 " INFIDELITY." 



regard them as rights. The horse has rights. The dog. The 
cat, and the 7-at even. Real rights. And these rights are sacred 
They are not to be invaded. Mankind are to study the happiness 
of all beings, so far as they are connected with them. How far 
it is to be carried, depends upon how far the most perfect good 
w'ill cati carry it. Farther than it can go — it is under no obliga- 
tion to go. Does any body seriously think it right, to trifle with 
animal happiness and animal suffering? They do trifle with 
them, and talk about dominion over them being given to man. 
If this dominion involve ill treatment — it was a bad gift, whoever 
gave it — in my opinion. They talk of dominion — and found upon 
it the right of capricious treatment. But that any body thi7iks it 
right to injure the brute, I doubt. Whoever will do it — is liable 
to extend the like injury to mankind. " Dominion" is claimed 
over portion of mankind as well as brute-kind, and by " divine 
right" too. More of this hereafter. 



« INFIDELITY." 

[f'rom the Herald of Freedom of Oct. 31, 1845.] 

A GOOD friend writes me, that apprehensions are entertained 
and surmises uttered, of my " infidelity," among some who are 
readers of our paper — and he wishes to know explicitly of me 
whether I am " infidel" or not — with a view, it seems, of con- 
tinuing or not, to take the Herald of Freedom. Before saying 
any thing on that question, I will just reprove the dear friend, 
gently, of the bigotry which prompted him to write the request. 
I call it bigotry — for I have myself been a bigot, and know what 
it-is. It is bigotry, I think, to make any one's religious belief or 
disbelief a criterion of character, or a condition of fellowship. 
If my friend don't like the Herald of Freedom — for what is in it, 
let him discontinue it. If my principles, as declared in it, do 
not please him, and he, desires of the paper any thing more than 
a free and full opportunity to combat them in it, he wants a paper 
I cannot furnish. He is well disposed, I am sure, but the requi- 



THANKSGIVING. 341 



sition he makes on me, is, I think, a wrong one, and unfriendly 
to freedom. 

Whether I am "Infidel" or not, in the technical sense of the 
word, I don't know as I could tell. I certainly should decline to 
tell, if asked, as I am here. I will say this — I am free, and mean 
to be — to examine every department of the religions of the day — 
to think of them as I may, and to speak of them as I think. Any 
thing I disbelieve or believe in regard to them, and have occasion 
to speak in the Herald of Freedom, I will speak it — and so ex- 
plicitly, as not to be mistaken. If my friend is not thus free, I 
think him bigoted. He will on second thought, perhaps, agree 
with me. And here I will say, that I think nothing is worthier 
of severe condemnation, than the priestly fashion of intimidating 
honest, truthful inquiry by the bug-bear of " Infidelity." It is 
death to human freedom and happiness. 



THANKSGIVING. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Nov. 28, 1843.] 

I wouldn't grumble at any of our governmental or religious 
customs, that have any thing like cheer or comfort connected with 
them. There is, associated with this long-waisted, Puritan fes- 
tival, called Thanksgiving, at least the idea of Punkin Pie — and 
the word "thanks," in the name. These are better than noth- 
ing. — Punkin Pie — if it is such as I used to eat, at old John Tay- 
lor Oilman thanksgivings, when a governor was an awful great 
man. John H. Steele, though, is more of a man than all the 
o-overnors put together, that have gone before him in New Hamp- 
shire. His heart beats and his blood circulates in his veins, in 
spite of " His E.xcellency." This is more than can be said of any 
other Captain General. John H. Steele exercises the humanity 
of a tender-hearted man, even while he is officially absorbed in 
the State. While he is part and parcel of the Granite State, he 
manifests the sympathies of an individual man. A thing no 
Governor or Emperor ever did before him, to my knowledge — or 
29* 



342 THANKSGIVING. 



belief — and which no one will be likely to do after him — and 
which in fact he ought not to have been guilty of, himself A 
governor has no right to be humane. Humanity is no legitimate 
ingredient of a Chief Magistrate — or any other Magistrate. The 
State can't pity or sympathize. John H. Steele has done both. 
He is therefore no governor. And the Democratic Party — dem- 
ocratic as he is — cannot overlook it in him — and they will hurry 
to supersede him, by a governor that will be obnoxious to no such 
charges. 

But Punkin Pie and " thanks," — it is clever to have a custom 
associated with them. As to Turkeys and allspice, it is not so 
clever. The turkeys may " thank" some of us — for we have no 
hand, directly or indirectly, in the slaughter of any of them — 
on this festive occasion. They might survive and gobble on, a 
hundred thanksgivings, for all me, and so might all the pullets, 
and all the beef-critters, and them, that furnish the spar'-ribs. 
My thanksgivings bring no dooms-day to any of them. And 
there are poor dogs among us, who have to be " thank"ful — 
without the punkin pie, even. They are thankful it's no worse. 
Poor folks are glad of nothing. They can take the Proclamation 
and go out the north-west side of their unbanked dwellings, 
and read it. As for " assembling at the usual places of public 
worship," they caji't so well, for lack of— where to sit — and 
lack of shoes and clothes and so on. There is one class among 
us who are sure to have cause to thank God. The class that 
read the proclamations, thanksgiving-day. They are always 
sure of the turkeys, and the spice, and the punkin pie. They 
do the thanking God— and but for them, it wouldn't be done, 
and the proclamations would go unread. Next to the govern- 
ors, themselves, who make the thanksgivings, are the Proclama- 
tion-readers. There are folk, that have to be thankful for 
potatoes and onions — if they can get the like of them, this year, 
when the speculator has got his eye on the lowest necessaries 
of life. "God save the poor, this winter. I never used to think 
enough about them, when I had my shed full of old wood — my 
potato bin piled high in the cellar, and a consciousness of abso- 
lute freedom from lack of any thing, about me. I wish I had 



REPLY TO A CORRESPONDENT. 343 

thought more of the destitute, then. Somehow or other it is 
easier to think of them this thanksgiving time than ever before, 
to me. And yet I haven't so much as read the proclamation — and 
have no idea of going to any of the tlumk-meeUugs of the Sects. 
Would to God, I had the means of making every body feel free 
this winter of the possibility of want. I'd give them cause of 
gladness, if not of thanksgiving. I think I would. Thanksgiving 
looks gay, and brings the sleigh-rides and balls. But to many a 
heart it brings nothing but the snow and the cold. Behind it 
scowls Winter. And ah what can the poor widow do — whose 
husband died of drinking in the fall — and whom " thanksirivin" 
surprises with ragged, shoe-less little ones, and a desolate wood- 
yard ! Let the poor trader, who sold her husband the liquor, go 
to meet'n, thanksgiving day, round by her dwelling. And the 
sleek, portly divine, under whose preaching he did it — and who 
has helped break up the Free Meetings of the temperance people, 
let him wrap his blue cloak round him, and go by the widow's, 
as he goes to read the proclamation and thank his God who 
vouchsafes him the fat of the land. But I won't taunt any body, 
least of all, those whom abundance cannot begin to make happy. 
Who have no sympathies — no necessities — no enjoyments, " pain- 
ful preeminence," — " above life's comforts," as well as " its weak- 
ness." Up there, in the unnatural cold. They better come 
down, among mankind — where they can endure and enjoy — and 
take some show in a thanksgiving besides eating a turkey and 
reading the proclamation. 



REPLY TO A CORRESPONDENT. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of January 0, 184C.] 

Nothing is more welcome or grateful to me, than frank, hon- 
est disapproval of my position asid opinions, like the above of 
H. O. S. I like it not only for its fidelity and fearlessness, but it 
lielps me to make good my assailed foundations, if they are true. 
It comes in aid, as " interruptions" do— to help the truth-loving 



344 REPLY TO A CORRESPONDENT. 

speaker, in " Free Meeting." It helps me present my case, and 
helps the reader to the truth. I thank our correspondent, there- 
fore, in my own and the reader's behalf for his valuable interpo- 
sition. And now, a remark or two in reply 

Our correspondent thinks I am wrong in regarding Humanity 
as I do, unmingled with religious considerations, or regard for 
God. This seems his main ground of disapproval of my position. 
Whether he has rightly " defined my position," or not, my past 
position I mean, I will not undertake to settle. I will endeavor 
to give my present position. Not define it — for it is indefinite — 
or not definite. At least, I desire to have it so. I want it to be 
an ever-changing — advancing — improving — learning — never stop- 
ping — undefinable position — if" position" that can be called, which 
never stops, but is always on the march. We cannot speak of 
the " position" of a charging army. It had one, in time of truce, 
and when it was idly in the barracks. Then, its "position" 
could be " defined." Amid t!ie dust and hurricane of the charge 
and the encounter, and mayhap of triumphant pursuit of the routed 
foe — it would be hard to define its attitude — or take its likeness. 
I am desirous here of illustrating what The Herald of Freedom 
ought to be and aims to be, rather than what it is. Its indefin- 
able motto-word — " Excelsior." I want to benefit Mankind and 
all animal kind and all other kind within my reach, if any other 
there be, that needs benefiting and can receive it at my hands. 

I want, eminently, the overthrow of the Slave-system, that par- 
alyzes the country and the world. And all auxiliary systems to 
it. On their own account, as well as because they sustain this 
crowning outrage on human happiness and rights. I think the 
good and the welfare of the world demand the overthrow of these 
systems. The glory of God may require it also. That the wel- 
fare of Humanity does, I know, or think I do. The glory of 
God may. His welfare cannot, I should imagine. I imagine it 
would not promote any welfare of His — so much as that of the 
parties here concerned — to have every system of hatred and hurt, 
among mankind, abolished. I may be wrong in supposing the 
Welfare of Mankind, an object of paramount concern with me, 
to the glory of God. I do suppose so. Even if I knew as well 



REPLY TO A CORRESPONDENT. 345 

what would glorify God, as 1 do what would benefit mankind, and 
could promote the one, as eft'ectuately as I could the other. If 
any being, but God, preferred his own glory to the good of man- 
kind, we shouldn't think well of him. If it was Bonaparte or 
Cffisar, we shouldn't speak well of him. We should speak ill. 
We should say. Tyrant — heartless, selfish Oppressor. A French 
soldier would worship — and cry " vive I'Empereur." And so 
would an old Roman Legion, as it offered itself to destruction, 
to save the " bald first Caesar's" form from harm or dishonor. 
And our devotees would worship God, while they thought he 
cared more for " the honor of His great name," than for the good 
of mankind. And why do they do it ? For much the same rea- 
son in all the three cases. It is more generous in the cases of 
the poor infatuated soldiers — for their worship has a savoring of 
sympathy in it — for their Deities were human. The religious 
worshipper's is based in unmitigated dread of the fury of their 
Divinity, and a most base desire to propitiate his profitable favor. 
That is, so far as their worship is real. It has in fact scarcely 
any reality in it. It is nearly all imaginary. The reality about 
it — is the inclination they feel to kill every body who won't join 
them in it. That is real. They carry that out. The rest is 
pretty much fancy and superstition, I think. 

Mankind need love and help. God needs neither. We can 
love mankind and help them. God, we can neither help nor 
love. And until we have loved and helped mankind, as much as 
they need, and as much as can help and love them, we ought not 
to try to worship God, or to exercise emotions towards him. If 
we should, the emotions would be sure to be bad ones. We don't 
feel right towards mankind, till we love them as much and as well 
as we can and as they need. And until we do this, we are not 
prepared to feel rightly towards any other being. We are not 
in loving mood or spirit. And our worship wouldn't be agreea- 
ble to any Being that was good. The Devil, as we call him, 
might like it, so far as we are concerned. It wouldn't be so very 
flattering to him. 

In my opinion — my present one, this moment while I am writ- 
ing — before we have any duties to perform towards God, we have 



346 REPLY TO A CORRESPONDENT. 

got to perform every one we have found out, towards one another. 
And desire to perform these human duties, as we call them, will 
preclude all idea of duties to Divinity, as duties to Divinity pre- 
clude all idea of any to Humanity — and are resorted to — (as I 
think) as a subterfuge from the performance of any. I believe 
that Piety is a cheap and bad substitute for Humanity. And that 
the more pious any one becomes — the more religious — the more 
in love with the gods — the " Dii immortales," as the Romans 
used to call it — or " Almighty God," as the Roman Catholics 
have it — the less practical love he has for any human creature, 
and the more sublimated and hopeless is his selfishness. I be- 
lieve this to be the nature of the thing. I might say here, that 
Christianity teaches all I here say, but I won't say it — for it will 
seem like taking shelter in Scripture, from the responsibility of 
naked, unauthorized opinion. I will say it, on my own respon- 
sibility. And it is nobody's business, if I am incorrect in the 
opinion. I am not accountable to any body, or to the public, for 
daring to say what I do. Every body has a right to say the con- 
trary. As H. O. S. will, if he so thinks. And that is all he will 
do. He would not have me, sent for the heresy, either to Hell, 
or to Hopkinton. Henry Wood might — to both. My objec- 
tion to this " Piety" is, not that it is unchristian, (which it grossly 
is,) but that it is ?<Mhuman. The world runs to Piety. It runs 
reluctantly at first — but eagerly at length. Piety, in some form 
or other. The orthodox Piety is based in Hatred of Mankind — 
which it calls Love of God. It regards mankind as " totally de- 
praved" and hateful. It has, itself, " shuffled off" its own total 
depravity, under a partial (but acceptable) sanctification. It has 
got insurance against the fire of the wrath of its Divinity. This 
is orthodox Piety, in its various, belligerent, and (if it had the 
power) crucifying divisions and sects. There is a heterodox 
Piety, that ventures to hold that Love to Mankind is not totally 
incompatible with Love of God. It has to repudiate the " total 
depravity" of mankind, in order to make it lawful to love them. 
This is one reason of the repudiation. It wouldn't do to love 
creatures abhorred of God and consigned by him to Damnation 
And it would hardly seem reasonable to love a God, who had 



REPLY TO A CORRESPONDENT. 347 

such purposes towards mankind — even if they were his enemies — 
and all to promote his own honor and glory. So heterodox Piety 
modifies the character of God and elevates that of Man, and 
holds to loving both. Now — if this Piety will so love God, that 
it can lake an active, healthy part in behalf of man, if it will 
only worship, so that it can help us, suffering, wretched folks, 
here on the surface of the ground, and help us, for our sakes — 
and not merely for God's sake, I will not quarrel with their piety. 
I will laud their humanity. And if their piety promotes it, I 
will laud that. And if it engenders it — if it is essential to it — 
I will make it paramount. If their love to God is the basis of 
love to mankind — if piety is the foundation of humanity — right- 
eousness — goodness — then I go for Love to God and Piety, first 
of all. But, really, I must have this goodness. I want the 
wrongs of humanity first righted. I think they can be — ought to 
be — must be. I think we ought to be happy, here. Considera- 
bly happy — if not exstatically so. Comfortably happy. And I 
want that made the paramount object. To be happy, we must 
be right. I would have it, that we must be Right — rather than 
happy. That / must be right, and my neighbor be made happy. 
I, right, in order to have him happy. Not right, that / might be 
happy, myself, — but that he might. That looks bigger and better 
to me, than the other — or than any other. I, right, from sheer 
love (approval) of the Right — and to promote the happiness of 
my neighbor ! That strikes me, as torJl as you can get it. And 
nothing short of that, will do, at all. Adopt that, and the world 
goes well. Any thing short of that, and it will go ill. All cre- 
ation can't make it otherwise. Disinterested Good Will will 
make the World what it wants to be made. Piety can't make it 
so. Piety makes it the contrary. Makes it what it is. The 
world is full of Piety and Hate and Fight and Misery. The 
Love that would make it happy, is withheld from its needy, suf- 
fering inhabitants, and absorbed into Devotion, which sends all 
its incense up into the cold sky, to God. Piety has built temples 
to its Gods, all over the face of the earth, at a cost that would 
have sheltered all mankind, including that " Son of Man, who 
had not where to lay his head." Multitudes of mankind have 



348 REPLY TO A CORRESPONDENT> 

no shelter now, but have to bide the peltings of the elements, 
while there are houses of God, that cost enough to build a city. 
One mountain-looking cathedral, I myself beheld, in the godly 
city of York, old England, that cost $50,000,000. The habita- 
tions of men lay round about it, like fragments of stone round 
the foot of a mountain, from which they had tumbled. It seemed 
to have absorbed and devoured the means of a city. Piety built 
it. Piety that loved the God of Old England, but hated the 
People of Old England. The walls of the mighty Cathedral, 
accordingly, are covered all over, on the outside, the side next to 
the people, with grotesque heads, making up mouths, in token of 
the contempt felt by Piety for the people in behalf of its God. 
That seems to me to be Piety, in its genuine upshot and catas- 
trophe. Piety, with lesser means, builds its Old North meeting- 
houses, and its New North and its South, &c. &/C. here in the 
pious town of Concord. We have a good deal of humanity, 
however, in this same town. I ask H. O. S., if it springs from 
the Piety that built these Houses of God ? Are those houses not 
at war with the humanity of the town, and do they not denounce 
it as impiety, and is it not, in fact, impiety ? A good deal of the 
Humanity of the town aids in maintaining heterodox worship 
here. It aids it, because heterodoxy had arisen in opposition to 
orthodoxy. And it seemed necessary to carry on that opposition 
in some religious form or other. Real humanity has cause to 
oppose orthodoxy — but not, as I think, by worship. It does not 
go to the Mountains of Samaria, to set up an opposition worship, 
against the bloody old Temple at Jerusalem. But it says "nei- 
ther in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem." Equivalent to say- 
ing, Nor any where. I say, nor any where, whether or no. For 
so it seems to me it should be. 

If any body loves God in addition to loving mankind tcell 
enough, I have no objection. If they can love God without hat- 
ing mankind, I have none. If they do not hate mankind any 
the worse for what love of God they have, I have no objection to 
it. If they have a love of God resulting from a sufficient love 
of mankind, I have none. I like that. If love of mankind 
breeds it, and results in it, I want all to have it. It would do 



REPLY TO A CORRESPOiNDEiNT. 349 

God no good. He doesn't need it. The want of it doesn't harm 
him. But I will not quarrel with it. I am inclined to think, that 
there can be no right love of God in any breast, that does not 
sufficiently love humanity. Nor any right opinions of or notions 
about God. The best opinions in regard to God can only be en- 
tertained where there is due love to mankind. Due philanthropy. 
The opinions of the present misanthropic world are undoubtedly 
erroneous. 

The world, as I said, is full of religion and fight. Religion 
itself prompts to the fighting. It is the most belligerent thing in 
the world. And its fights are the most sanguinary and cruel of 
any. It has not proved a remedy for human ills — but aggravates 
them. It promotes them. Humanity would remedy them, would 
it not ? — Enough of it would. But how much Religion would 
do it ! How much Worship ! How much Piety ! " Mercy," 
enough of it, would do it — but how much " Sacrifice" would it 
take 1 All the " Rams" in old Spain — wouldn't do it — nor 
" rivers of oil," were they as wide and long as the Mississippi. 

I am making a long article here. But I want to say that man- 
kind wants the healing influences of Humanity. They must love 
one another more. The duty of this and the value of it, must be 
inculcated. It must come to be considered the duty of duties, 
and the remedy of remedies. Men have got to regard their neigh- 
bors' rights, as objects o^ sacred character. Objects of reverence. 
Objects of worship. Let the " religious sentiment" in man find 
vent and employment in this way. Not on abstract goodness — 
but on Human Rights. And on the performance of human du- 
ties. Let us venerate Humanity in others. Let us hold it sacred. 
Let us lay out our utmost natures upon it. At least enough to 
secure it its rights. If God wouldn't prefer this sort of worship, 
in us, to any other, there is no God, or no good one, according 
to my idea of goodness. 

I don't mean to say any thing here against worship, only as it 
may involve ill will to man. I must end my off'-hand article — for 
I am sick and weary and exhausted. I say this in excuse for the 
lacks in my article. I should like to hear again from H. O. S., 
and will write again, if I can, on the subject. 
30 



350 THE ATTIC WEAVER. 

THE ATTIC WEAVER. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Jan. 9, 1846.] 

What has happened to him, that he yields us no webs this 
many a month ? He might be winter-killed — but that wouldn't 
account for the failure of his loom and the silence of his sounding 
shuttle, long time before the sun had sunk beyond Capricornus, 
the " Mason and Dixon" of the Southern sky. He stopped send- 
ing us webs before the fall equinox. Has any thing driven him 
from his attic, our cunning Weaver? The termagant house- 
wife — or house-keeper, in a fit of spiteful neatness — has she 
mounted to the garret, armed with her vengeful broom, and swept 
the Weaver from his angle among the rafters-^homestead-web and 
all ? Did she brush the poetic creature down to the floor and set 

her blue stockin'd foot on his life ? Hang her picture, if she 

has done that. She has crushed out the life of The Herald of 
Freedom. One of its lives — for, thank heaven, it has more than 
one. More than nine, I should think — for no cat ever survived 
such doggings as have befallen it — to say nothing of the treatment 
it has undergone, that no dog would ever have been guilty of 

What has become of our Weaver ? Has he spun himself a 
cocoon — that has proved his winding sheet? Or has some one 
betrayed his hiding place, and has that put a stop to his weaving ? 
Some such rare, strange creatures, the moment they are discov- 
ered, stop working and never begin again. As the robin will 
" forsake her nest," they used to tell me — if a boy moved one of 
her blue eggs — ever so slightly from where she placed it. I have 
seen a truant insist on laying his mischievous fingers on one of 
them, and the next time we went to it, the eggs were all cold. 
The robin had been there and discovered that things were not as 
she left them, and had forsaken the nest, forever. Has any body 
sacrilegiously betrayed the retreat of the Attic Weaver ? I am 
afraid so. I have refused, a hundred times, to answer, with a con- 
jecture even, the inquiries of curious friends as to the whereabouts 
of the weaver's Attic. They have a terribly sensitive instinct — 
these natural operatives — these beavers and spider-web-weavers, 



THE ATTIC WEAVER. 351 

and the like. They have a perception, we cannot descry with a 
microscope of as many powers as Herschel's Spy-glass. Attenuated 
beyond the reach of Science. So the Indian will see tracks on 
the leaves in the woods, the white man never would dream of. 
And the hound has an instinct that infinitely outruns the sagacity 
of the Indian. They have no souls to save, these animal crea- 
tions, no immortal part, as we have, who are made but a notch 
"lower than the angels." The Attic Weaver, I suppose, hadn't 
any immortal soul to save or to lose, and so if any broomstick or 
mop-stick has squat her foot upon him, it isn't so much matter, 
as if it had been on one " made in the image of God." Her own 
glorious, immortal self — for instance. 

I don't know what has happened to our Weaver. He couldn't 
have spun out. His thread and his warp were of a kind, that 
betokened inexhaustible supply. These native weavers don't have 
to depend on cotton crops or the wool grower, for their material. 
They have their supply within and of themselves. They may spin 
out, in time. The web of life may be wove out. I am 'most 
sorry it may be, and should be sorrier still, were it not that my 
own runs out, too. Spiders grow old and die of old age. I won- 
der what is the age of the Spider. Take him, up in the angle of 
some old library, or some dungeon, where Sanctity has kept folks 
for unbelief, or the State has shut up her erring children, age after 
age, where broom-stuff never ventures to disturb the ancient nooks. 
There the gray old Spider lives and lays by her successive webs 
of sheeting and of duck, as successive human sufferers enter and 
perish out. She can remember many generations of prisoners, 
no doubt. And some of them, she had become intimate with, 
and let them see her weave, many a day, in the scanty light of 
their common apartment. 

I will not mourn our Weaver yet, till I know he is dead and 
gone. When I do, I will go out, some dewy, August morning, 
after haying, and gather gossamer from the tufts in the grass- 
fields, and make him up a shroud. His Herald of Freedom 
might do for his winding sheet, unless it be left to stand as a 
monument to his memory. But I am spinning a long yarn here. 
If the Weaver is alive, he will take my hint. He " has a few 



352 HENRY BROWN— CRAYON PORTRAITS. 

more left of the same sort," as somebody crankly has said, and 
every body eJse repeated. If he is dead, he will please consider 
this in the light of an obituary. 



HENRY BROWN— CRAYON PORTRAITS. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Jan. 23, 1846.] 

I HAVE had opportunity of witnessing lately, some rare-drawn 
portraits — done in this place, by aid of two very simple and 
homely materials, which I should have taken for nothing more 
than chalk and charcoal. No two substances, scarcely, (and 
these not mixed,) could seem less adequate to the production of 
the complexioned human face, with all its infinite diversity and 
multitude of expression — than these two, neither of which appear 
to have any tendency towards the hues of any countenance among 
us, legitimately admissible to the privilege of the pencil. There 
is, to be sure, a complexion in the land, that the charcoal might 
shadow forth, though our " white man," on the other hand, is 
hardly unsullied enough, to be depicted by a fragment broken off 
from the " Dover Cliffs." Yet these simple agents, of black and 
white — of light and shadow, are made, in the hands of genius, to 
impart to the dull drawing-paper, the living, breathing, and al- 
most speaking (the more than talking) " human face divine" — 
and with a rapidity, as well as truth, almost amounting to en- 
chantment. 

The author of these portraits is Henry Brown, younger brother 
of our enterprising Concord Book-seller. * * * * 

I did not wish to speak of him, so much, as an artist — as a 
person of rare genius — genius in the broad and beautiful sense 
of the term ; of taste — sense — wide and elegant reading — elevated 
and free mind — unalloyed wit and talent, but too great a modesty 
and want of self-esteem. I don't know but these latter qualities, 
in excess, are always incident and inevitable to the former — and 
perhaps necessary to their adornment and finish. At any rate, we 
find them in spirits of uncommon mould — those not of the ordi- 



HENRY BROWN— CRAYON PORTRAITS. 353 

nary, earthern-ware of the race — the porcelain. Fine, transpa- 
rent, fragile. Too daintily composed for every-day use. My 
young friend, for such he will let me call him, has this misfortune, 
too common to his rare class, that he shrinks from society, even 
that of the most secluded kind. 

I went to his chamber, at the instance of some indiscreet 
young friends, who are contemplating that a Book should be 
made up, out of the poor things I have committed to paper, in my 
nn-autho7--'ized day, and sat to his pencil, for a transcript of my 
exhausted and shipwrecked face, to go in on one of its blcmk 
leaves. And he has drawn a transcript of me — that, were it only 
of one of the current and acceptable originals that hung there 
about it, it would give sale and celebrity to a duller Book, than 
could be devised, I think, out of the most torpid of the materials 
I am here speaking of People would buy and keep the whole 
Book, for the frontispiece. 

My individual objection to the picture, ■and that of my nearer 
friends, is its sad degree of likeness ! I haven't the fancy for 
furrows and trenches and desolation, that they say stout old Oli- 
ver Cromwell had for scars, when he sternly bade his portrayer, 
to " paint him as he was." I have seen the day, and that, not so 
long ago, when I felt a lesser lack of intrepidity to venture such 
an injunction. Indeed my friend Henry Brown's crayons have 
made me the allowance of other Jingcrs, than Time's, having had 
a hand in my antiquatory. I have been an abolitionist — " before 
the mast" — for a period longer than the Revolutionary war ! 
Enough to make any body look in sad earnest ! And friends 
have touched me, as well as foes and time ! But too much said 
of this. I intended none of it. I did not intend a word of any 
originals, but only of these pictures, and their author, yet both 
these are originals, though one are copies. 

Most dalliers with " the fine arts," betake themselves to them, 
ambitiously, or for thrift. Henry Brown seems to be one born 
to them. He seems naturally of them and master of them. I 
should think he was one who might be at ease in any of the 
whole circle of them. His gift of portrait-drawing he seems to 
undervalue, and almost to contemn it— as Zerah Colburn came 



354 HENRY BROWN— CRAYON PORTRAITS. 



to contemn his tremendous genius for numbers — and to be 
ashamed of it. I remember seeing him, after he had risen, from 
the mathematician that would have amazed La Place or Sir Isaac 
Newton, to be a Methodist preacher, when he treated his peculiar 
powers with solemn contempt, and seemed to regard their pos- 
session as almost a sin. He had learned to intonate, and whine, 
in true methodistical dismality ; and his keen, piercing look, like 
the pearl-diver's, or the fish-hawk's, (from looking after things at 
the bottom of the Sea ;) his far-off gaze, that reached down into 
the abyss and Great Deep of Numbers, was exchanged for the 
stolid and self-sujfficient blank of the Methodist minister. Henry 
Brown reminds one of him in " nothing else," of course, but 
this single disregard of extraordinary powers. 

I am speaking of all manner of things here — and in all manner 
of ways — in a notice of an ingenious friend and some of his off- 
hand drawings. But I am in haste to get an article ready for 
the paper. I have several things I have had to care about, this 
morning, besides this writing, and have to write, where several 
other persons are busy about me — engaged in sundry things — 
some of them quite youngcrly persons. Not the most favorable 
<;»-CMmstances to concentration, or directness, or pertinency of 
thought. I should like to have penned here, a trim, modest, 
moderate notice of my young and valued friend — giving a war- 
rantable sketch of his pictures — with a word, a little descriptive, 
of himself. Some ideality in it, but the '\Aed\-real, such as he 
throws over his pictures, when he has in hand a head and features 
he deems somewhat worthy of his pencil. Not the fanciful ide- 
ality, but the rational. I have failed of it. I am too weary of 
the manual labor of penning this, to attempt another, or to cor- 
rect this, and it must go. So of all the little things I ever at- 
tempted to do. I set out for one thing, and it turns out another ! 
Pretty apt to be true. Always truly intended, so far as there was 
intent. On the whole, I wish people generally were less inten- 
tional, than they are; less designing. (I don't speak of artists.) 
People, in their lives. Even writers, in their writings. Espe- 
cially, editors. Above all, preachers. We should get at some 
heart then — and, oftener than now, some mind. 



THOUGHTS ON THE DEATH PENALTY. 3,55 

THOUGHTS ON THE DEATH PENALTY, BY C. C. BURLEIGH, 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Jan. 23, 1840.] 

Our readers generally are familiar enough with the name — and 
many of them with the person and powers, of our beloved Anti- 
Slavery orator. Many in the country, not directly interested in 
the Anti-Slavery movement, have heard him advocate the abolition 
of the Gibbet, and know with what clearness— fullness and con- 
clusiveness of reasoning, he does it. All such can anticipate 
with what unanswerable ability he has written this work, and 
will, I should think, be desirous of reading it. I have gone over 
the " Thoughts," as particularly as I am able to, a Book, and 
can bear witness to its being all that the reader has a right to ex- 
pect from the powers of the writer. It is arranged with great 
judgment and order, and winds about the poor old gallows tree 
an uninterrupted chain of argument for its destruction. Chain- 
lightning, I wish it might prove, to strike it and splinter it to the 
very roots, as I have seen a White Pine, that had been just visited 
by one of these touches from the clouds. But then, the Gallows 
may well enough be left standing, among a hanging community. 
It is perhaps as merciful a way as any other, for the relentless 
Public to give vent to its vengeance, on the offending Individual. 
And, so long as people think they ought to be killed for crime — 
perhaps they better be hanged. Or so long as others think they 
ought. A murderer, with this horrid idea pursuing him, perhaps 
may as well be relieved, by hanging. They better let him hang 
himself, though. And not try to deter him from it, by denying 
his corse " christian burial." If he hangs himself, nobody else 
will be guilty of it, but himself — and he won't be here. Queer, 
that they won't allow a murderer to hang himself! But they 
think he ought to be hung? If he does it, himself, isn't it done? 
Isn't he dead — as dead as he can be — or as they want him to be ? 
Isn't he out of the way — and as incapable, as they can make him, 
of killing any body more? Or is it the killing him, herself, that 
the old State has such a fancy for? She will kill a man for mur- 
der — but won't let him kill himself for it — or any body else kill 



356 THOUGHTS ON THE DEATH PENALTY. 

him. If any body else kills him — does what she intends to — she 
will kill Mm. She would kill a murderer, for killing himself — 
(even for hanging himself, after her own favorite fashion) if she 
could break his neck over again. It is because she wants the 
monopoly of strangulation, in her own heaven-ordained hands. 
The " hangers-that-be," they " are ordained of God." Inspira- 
tion says so. " Our Father, which art in Heaven," he has or- 
dained — that His family of children, here, under heaven, the bro- 
thers and sisters of us, we that say " our Father," &lc., when we 
pray — should, in a family way, throw ourselves into corporation 
form — turn into a Board — and constitute a Committee, with phy- 
sical powers to down with any individual of us — or any small, 
unincorporated gang of us, that may casually be thrown together, 
and put them to death — or to any torture they choose, short of 
death. And as scon as the whole of us do it — or as few of us as 
can continue to make the whole believe they can't help it, if they 
try, why, then, there is the Government, divinely " ordained," 
and let down, as it were from God out of the concave over head. 
" He that resisteth, shall receive unto himself damnation." (He 
will be likely to, strangulation — as matters stand.) And all for 
resisting the Board. Not for putting a live man to death — but 
for any body's doing it, beside the yV/Mcr-in-heaven-ordained 
Board or State. What would one of the^e total-depravity- 
" fathers," here on the earth, think of his family of children, who 
should set up such an " institution," out in his door-yard — where 
they go to play — and should string up little Charley — or Anna — 
or whoever, by the neck — for some childish misdemeanor, done 
without permission of the majority of them? How would he 
feel — the " depraved" old gentleman — coming out, some time, to 
enjoy the glee of the young ones — to find one of them dangling 
by the neck, and older brother Sam — or Jim, standing dismally 
by, as Chaplain ? And then Jim or Sam roll up the white of 
their eyes, and charge him with having " ordained" what they had 
been about. 

If the family are of a gibbety temper and character — why let 
them have gibbets — and be hanged to them. And if they don't 
hate one another quite bad enough for that, and do, for shutting 



INSTRUMENTALITIES. 357 



up in dungeons, for life or for years — let them have dungeons. 
Or fine — or whip — or crop ears — or whatever the family are 
malignant and hateful enough, to do. When they come to love 
one another, they will leave it off. Cross children will snap at 
each other, and quarrel. Deprave them sufficiently — make them 
bad enough, and they will strangle one another. 

I have received a quantity of Burleigh's Books to sell for him. 
Some are at Brown's Book store here, and some in the garret of 
the Herald of Freedom. A trimmer, abler, more masterly argu- 
ment, has not been put together in words. Parson Cheever is 
Burleigh's antagonist. Burleigh doesn't leave a rag of his par- 
son's gown on his back. Nobody makes an argument perfect 
and unansivcrable, but Charles Burleigh. Give him a good cause, 
at the Bar, as good a one as he has here — and let him speak first, 
and the adversary counsel never would reply. The Court wouldn't 
let him. His client wouldn't let him — if he had common sense. 
The counsel wouldn't, himself — for he wouldn't find an inch of 
ground left to start on. I never knew so absolute an arguer, as 
Burleigh. And he has displayed himself completely in this work. 

Argument, however, isn't the thing needed to abolish the gal- 
lows — in my opinion. It must be chopped down (if lightning 
don't strike it,) by the axe of Statement ! ! 



INSTRUMENTALITIES. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of Jan. 23, 184G.] 

Generally we imagine that none are of any power, unless 
they consist of physical force, or are connected with it. We 
want you to do so and so — (different from what ymi are doing,) 
and if you don't, we'll make you. We'll drive you. Or we'll 
scare you. That is what is called " doing something." All else 
is " mere talk." And " what signifies talk, unless you do some- 
thing !" 

Now, I think talk signifies every thing, provided, always, you 
do not accompany it with attempts to do. If you will merely 



358 INSTRUMENTALITIES. 

talk, you can accomplish any thing that is right. You must have 
it right, or talk won't effect it. If your object is wrong— one 
that won't bear talk, you must bring other instrumentalities in. 
The fear of the halter and the dungeon — or the fear of Hell. 
You must enlist political party, or religious. You must legislate 
and punish for breach of your law — or you must influence, by 
threats of Damnation. If you want to bring about any thing, 
that is right, you can do it by talk. You can do it by nothing 
else — and you will not incline to try any thing else. The first 
thing you'll ask — and the last — is free speech and a hearing. 
And you feel certain of success. 

Talk is safe, as well as powerful. The French Revolution 
was begun by talk, Voltaire begun it. He begun it with his 
omnipotent pen. For by talk, I mean writing, as well as speak- 
ing. Voltaire accomplished the French Revolution, as well as 
begun it, with his almighty pen. At the height of his strength, 
there wasn't a sword, or an army, or a throne — or all the swords 
and armies and thrones of Europe combined, or of the World — 
that were a match for his single pen — or that were not in awe of 
it. Frederick the great, didn't feel contented till Voltaire filled 
up the measure of his glory by consenting to go and reside at his 
court. Yet Voltaire never did any thing, other folks did and 
kept doing — and Voltaire talked about them, and his ridicule was 
the " King of Terrors." It was just, and they could not stand 
under it. He prostrated the Catholic Religion and the Divine 
Right of Kings, with his little quill. And the Revolution was a 
safe one. 

They say it was a bad revolution. No matter as to the ques- 
tion of the efficacy of Talk. Talk wrought it, and " nothing 
else." They fought, after it was over, but the fighting did not 
achieve the revolution, and tims no part of it. I think the revo- 
lution was a good one. Wholly good. They undertook some 
doing, afl;er it was over. The Government and Priesthood un- 
dertook to reconquer the Revolution, and to annihilate it, by the 
sword. The People foolishly left talking, and went to fighting, 
— and the glory of the Revolution was tarnished and obscu- 
red. Had the Revolutionized people been peaceful, and relied 



LETTER FROM LYNN. 359 

upon their speech for protection, the French Government and 
Priesthood, (which is always but parcel of Government) would 
have perished and disappeared forever, and the People now been 
free. And probably, all the world free. Look at O'Connell and 
Great Britain. O'Connell has trusted to his tongue, and con- 
quered that Government, " the bend of whose eye doth awe the 
World." His object was political. He hasn't accomplished that, 
and probably can't. But the Government attempted to crush him. 
He confined himself to speech, and he beat them. They did, 
and O'Connell talked. They " did something." With him, it 
was " all talk and no do." The result is, the government was 
baffled and defeated, O'Connell stands unhurt and erect from the 
terrible conflict, like the Eddy-stone Light-house the morning 
after its conflict with the most dreadful tempest that ever beat 
upon the coast of England. 



LETTER FROM LYNN. 



[From the Herald of Freedom of March 6, 1846.] 

Lynn, Mass., March 2, 1846. 
Dear"K." — I thank you, in behalf of our friends, for the 
paper furnished them, last Herald of Freedom. I hope one such 
good turn will produce another. I am still tarrying here away from 
home, seduced by kindness and a tality that is a good deal more 
kindly than hospi — a tiality it is — apar-tiality, nay, it is above par. 
I am cherished, together with my entire " family" — in the vocal 
sense of the word, at the cottage with a ham to it, where I was 
so taken in, last August, as my Herald friends may remember. 
I should have broken away and been at the Herald of Freedom's 
garret, but for the shrewd idea that if I kept away, we might get 
another paper out of you. Give this a place in it, if it comes in 
season. I liked exceedingly what you say of the true character 
of an anti-slavery paper. For my own part, I regard that as the 
most genuine and efficient — which is, apparently to the superficial 
eye, the remotest from the subject. That, that says least about 



300 LETTER FROM LYNN. 

plantations and cowskins and cats — and even about colored peo- 
ple. Principles, that lie at the foundation of the character of 
this generation — the principles of which Christendom is made 
up — are the matters to be agitated for the overthrow of slavery. 
You can make people hate a master, by telling how he flogs a 
slave — but it will have no tendency to give either slave or master 
their liberty. A master must have a whip. And to have it to any 
purpose, he must use it. No slave is afraid of a whip, that is 
never used. A slave can't be governed without the whip. It is 
the only thing he can be governed by, unless you take something 
worse. It is the most merciful implement of mastery. The 
southern master, no doubt uses it as gently as he can and live. 
The slave would use it more severely about his fellow-slaves if it 
were in his hand instead of his master's. And when you berate 
the master for the cruel use of it — he knows you do him injustice- 
He is not cruel (in the general) and he knows it and he despises 
and spurns you as a calumniator, when you charge him with it. 
The cruelty of the Slave system isn't there. It lies farther off 
from the plantation. It lies up at the fountains of opinion and 
moral character in the non-slave states of the country. In the 
neighborhood of its worship. The god of the country is an over- 
grown master. The worship of the people is the worship of 
Slaves. The result is the ground-down — powdered : pulverised 
poverty and misery of the laborer — and his open enslavement if 
he is black. And I am not sure but what chattelization is the 
mildest form, in which the worship of the country can immolate 
black Labor. It is certainly made more endurable, than free- 
negroism. The countenance of the Slave has been, heretofore, 
the least wo-begone of the two. On the same ground, that the 
horse is less sad than the human vassal that sometimes holds the 
plough in the furrow behind him. The latter never prances or 
pricks up his ears. The horse and the dog are blessed, in com- 
parison of him. Mastery never insults the Slave. But poor La- 
bor, it does insult. That has to endure the degradation of a dog 
with the terrible sensibilities of a man. Now, I say, in Hu- 
manity's name, either reduce Labor to Doghood, that it may have 
a dog's endurance — and insensibility — or else elevate it to Man- 



LETTER FROM LYNN. 361 

hood's rights and prerogatives. Don't combine the two natures — 
or the human nature, with the brute condition. 

Let mankind have the right of Thought. Let us have the ac- 
companying right of Speech. Let us get into the free exercise 
of it. And do it here at the north. Not ask it, first, for the 
slave in the rice field. It would be too inconvenient to have its 
exercise attempted there. It caji't be tolerated there. There 
must be silence there, and it must be maintained by the whip or 
the pistol. Let us get freedom to speak, here — where we are a 
little farther off from the powder-magazine. Where it is a little 
safer to carry fire. Freedom of Speech here will result (and 
speedily) in the abolition of slavery there. It is better for the 
master and for the slave, that the relation cease. It hurts the 
master, desperately, to be one — and the slave, to be a slave. And 
the Yankee, to be pro-slavery. And the priest, to be what makes 
the lay Yankee a jack-slaveholder, and the people of the planta- 
tion masters of slaves. All these positions are the natural erup- 
tions on the surface of such moral character as ours. The only 
remedy is in talking it freely vp. 

When a dog is hit by a stone or club, he sometimes turns about 
and grabs at it, as if it were the real assailant, and while he is 
breaking his teeth upon the insensible thing, the arm that threw 
it hurls another at him and hits him harder. It isn't the way for 
him to bark at the stones and clubs — or to bite them. If he 
bites any body, he better go back a little among the causes of his 
stoning. So in Anti-Slavery. 

Anti-Slavery shouldn't threaten or hurt any body. It should 
neither hurt with the pen or tongue, nor with the sword. A phy- 
sical non-resistance, that will belabor and doom, with ill-natured 
goose quill or priestly voice, is only cowardice pretending to be 
peace. If you get indignant at intolerable wrongs — why, say 
so — and show it. It is stronger, perhaps, not to get out of pa- 
tience. But it is hypocritical and wicked to affect a patience one 
does not feel. But never undertake to reform any body by brutal 
or unfriendly treatment. And of all the ill-treatment in the world, 
the most hateful to me is that boardly sort, that looks smiling (or 
solemn) and quotes a soft text, while it is hatefully aimincr at your 
31 



362 LETTER FROM LYNN. 

life. I hate this authority-righteossness — this loving-kindness, 
that will cant about " overcoming evil with good," and at the 
same time wish you to the devil, and cry, "Vengeance is mine, 
saith the Lord," 

I am not sticking to the point here, very pertinaciously. But 
would say, on the whole, the way to lift a load with the lever, is 
to go oif to the long end of it, as far as you can get from your 
load — not lay head-long shoulder to the load itself, nor get so 
near it as to be within your fulcrum or turning point. Lay hold 
and keep hold, of the long end of the pry. 

It is a real March morning, this Monday here at Lynn. The 
wind has been blowing half the night perhaps, sheer north-east, 
and the waves come in on Egg rock — the Nahant head lands and 
the Lynn beach, in majestic style. It is appalling to see the slow- 
tossing surf heave white over the ridges of rock. It isn't at its 
height yet — but wants to blow twenty-four hours steady, before 
the great thing gets under way. Then it will take time to assuage 
it again. I saw the Cambria, yesterday, pass here, on her way to 
England. She was to leave the Boston wharf at two in the after- 
noon. Granting her time to travel a dozen miles, we begun to 
look for her to appear beyond the Nahant point — and within a 
minute or two she presented herself — her plume of smoke thrown 
superbly off over the sea — and white as wool in the western sun. 
It was magnificent to see her address herself to so mighty a voy- 
age, forth into that interminable deep, which, awful and sublime 
as it is, begins to look subordinate beside this human power that 
has mastered it. It isn't true — what Byron says — " His (man's) 
control stops with the shore." It doesn't stop there. It doesn't 
stop any where. He is an overmatch for any and all the elements. 
To be sure, they sometimes turn upon him and take him at dis- 
advantage and destroy him. As the horse does on his heedless 
driver, or the reindeer in the sledge upon the Laplander. Yet 
the horse and the reindeer are servants — not masters. And so 
are the elements and the great boisterous Sea. The Cunard 
packets navigate it with such regularity, that they seldom vary 
four and twenty hours in a voyage. They are looked for almost 
as confidently as the cars or the mail stages. People will by and 



WAR. 3C3 

by take out their watches and look at them, in expectation of the 
Steamer from Liverpool — or from India. And men will harness 
wind and steam and water to their chariots — and yoke up the 
Lightning and make it plough the water and "harrow the valleys 
after them." The races united and in kindly activity, can find 
out every thing and accomplish every thing, that is true. They 
will subject the elements then, instead of subjecting one another. 
The elements are made for subjection. Their broad shoulders 
are spread for service. It doesn't degrade them or weary them, 
or impoverish them, to be made to work. Yea they are willing 
to work. All they want of intelligent mankind is, that it will 
stand out of the way and give them elbow room and a chance. 

Dr. Kittredge is introducing the Water Cure into Lynn. He 
will make fine work of it — superadding water to his long expe- 
rience and ample attainments in the healing science. I con- 
gratulate the people here on his being among them as their 
physician. Water will work wonders in his strong and saga- 
cious hands. ***** 

Yours for myself, and all our readers, N. P. R, 



WAR. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of May 22, 1846.] 

At last the Country is involved in this favorite pastime of 
Kings. They are at War. The Government has involved the 
People in it. It has proclaimed War, and, so far as I can judge, 
has provoked it and brought it on. I don't mean any particular 
party has done it. All have done it — especially the party in 
power. I don't believe there was any cause for it. I don't be- 
lieve the miserable occasion existed, that commonly exists. There 
was probably no more occasion for this strong country going to 
war with feeble Mexico, than for a six-foot Bully to have a fight with 
any feeble school boy. The great strong brute might exasperate 
the boy and put upon Mm, till he would have to show quarrel, if 
he had any resentment and spirit in him. And after the brute 



364 WAR. 

had got the bt)y to strike, he'd feel justified in tailing upon him 
and smashing him up. 

This nation ought to have more sense than to go to War, with 
any people — strong or weak. But a nation never has any sense. 
It is never any thing but a great " Board." A great, wooden 
Corporation. It has no sense, of course, any more than a smaller 
"Board" has. If the nation had half wit, it would never get 
into such a scrape as War. It will do the country more mischief 
than it can recover in a hundred years of most successful indus- 
try after it is over. It would be as ruinous to the People, as a 
seven years' Lawsuit is to a middling farmer. Look at some of 
the lesser results. The killings. Thousands of the people get 
shot to death. Thousands get crippled for life with the hideous 
hardships and exposures of " the service." Multitudes come 
home with an eye less than they went — or an arm or a leg, and 
go hobbling without, to the grave — compensated with a chance 
of telling what battles they were in, and with drink to make 'em 
forget their misery. Some of 'em will get a pension, along to- 
wards the grave, to buy the drink with. Then there is lots of 
widows — to say nothing of orphans. They say Marblehead is 
full of widows — wives of fishermen lost at sea. Last war, it is 
said, they were mightily multiplied by the fishermen going into 
the navy and army. The whole country will be one IMarblehead. 
It will be marble-hearted, at least. War will indurate the general 
heart to petrifaction. The press will harden it like the petrifying 
waters, that, in certain regions, turn every thing within their 
flow — things and animals, into adamant. And the widows will 
be nearly all poor folks' widows. The people killed will be gene- 
rally working people, that will be missed by the country. The 
great folks wouldn't be. If they perished, they could easily be 
supplied — or if they wa'n't, the loss wouldn't be severe. 

" A breath can make them, as a breath has made, 
But a brave Peasantry — the country's pride, 
When once destroyed — can never be supplied." 

I don't call them Peasantry , but the destruction of the work- 
ing people is so much taken right out of a country. War's widows 
are generally theirs. Now and then an officer gets shot. His 



WAR. 365 

widow is looked after by government. Congress will grant her a 
pension. The soldiers' widows get their pensions in the Poor 
House. There don't occur any widows of Congress-men — or 
Secretaries or Presidents. War doesn't bereave their ladies. It 
is Jighting makes the widows, not declaring the war. Congress- 
men declare the war and leave the people to fight it. It is the 
blood of the people that gets shed. It is their women that are made 
the widows and not the ladies of the Congress-men. A States- 
man's Lady gets bereaved once in a while — but it is by her Lord's 
drink — or his duel. He hardly ever falls in battle. All he has 
to do with War is to declare it, and vote the lives and money of 
the people to carry it on. Orphans, the war will make, acres of 
orphans. Motherless, as well as fatherless — for your war-widow- 
hood is a decaying sort. It thins off the widows, " worst kind." 
They don't " stay" widows, long. That makes out the orphan- 
age complete, on both sides. And a tchole orphan — fatherless 
and motherless — is a pretty sight. War multiplies them. It 
breeds them. 

There will be glory got, too. And it is time the country got a 
little glory. It is some time — getting to be — since we got any 
glory. Glory is amazing wholesome for these Republics ! It 
made the old ones we read of, last. It will probably make this 
one immortal. And territory too. There wants a little territory. 
It is some time since there was any territory annexed. It might 
be well to have a little. This Mexico lays dreadful handy to the 
United States — all of it. And they are rather scant for land. 
Rather narrow contracted. If they could get the rest of the strip, 
between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific, it would be handy. 
And they tell of Jewelry and Gold in the Meeting-houses off 
there in Mexico. It would be a pretty thing enough — if our peo- 
ple could get hold of some of them. May be they might be put 
into some of our meetin' houses. Oh there is no telling the 
profits of these wars ! England may be coaxed into the scrape. 
And that would help the matter. The more the merrier. We 
can afford to lick all creation — only get us mad enough. And 
we can be got so, after a while. * * * * 

Are the People aware that we are in that dreadful predicament, 
31* 



360 THE DEATH OF TORREY. 

called War ? That infernal, barbarous predicament — that relic 
habitude of barbarous ages and savage people ! Do the New 
Hampshire people know the fact, and that slaughter is now mu- 
tually dealing out, on our South-western border, and the war fever 
beginning to inflame the pulse of the whole country ? The mad 
Government has applied a torch that may conflagrate the civilized 
globe. All our Christendom is combustible, ready for explosion. 
They have touched match to the border of it. It wouldn't be 
strange, if in six months the world was in a blaze. The fire may 
not spread. It depends something on the tcind. Lesser " mat- 
ters" have "kindled" the greatest "fires." The fire has been 
set, as regardlessly as woodman ever put brand to a piece of 
clearing in a dry time. But it is vain for Truth to lift up its cry. 
Let them fight — as many as will. 



THE DEATH OF TORREY. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of May 22, 1846.] 

Charles T. Torre v, of Salem, Mass., is dead. He has died in 
Baltimore Prison. He has suffered death there. After eighteen long, 
dreary, endless months of felon's imprisonment, — shut away from 
his home and from the sunshine and air of heaven — " Shut from 
the living whilst among the living" — buried alive, he has perished 
there. Poor Torrey, I was going to call him, but I will not. He is 
not to be mentioned with pity now. He has died for his principles. 
He has risen to the awful sublimity of Martyrdom. It becomes 
the country — if its frenzied attention can be arrested a moment 
from its Mexican wars and Texan acquisitions — to ponder the 
death of Torrey. He has been sacrificed to Slavery — who is at 
this hour of the country's history — its chief Deity — its Jupiter 
and Moloch. The people offer one another to him in sacrifice. 
They stand by and see one another offered up, in dumb silence — 
like the Hindoo looking on upon the funeral pile of the widow, 
or on the devotee, ground to powder under the lumbering felloes 
of their four-wheeled Divinity. It is scarcely to be believed that 



THE DEATH OF TORREY. 367 



they have dared to murder Torrey— so near the confines of the 
Northern States. Why, who was Torrey and what had he done I 
He was a citizen of Massachusetts— a Salem clergyman, one of 
the most unexceptionable of the New England ministers. And 
they have put him to death deliberately, in the face of the whole 
country. And for what ! Why, at the worst, for an undue exer- 
cise of philanthropy. They pretend it is according to their Law. 
But it cannot be. And if it were— a law so barbarous as to put 
a man to death for such a cause would disgrace any nation or 
tribe of people on the continent. And it isn't according to their 
Law. They have no law against such acts as the one for which 
they have killed Torrey. They have laws against negro stealing, 
and it may be, against aiding negroes to escape from their mas- 
ters with intent to defraud the master. But no law against the 
interposition of mere Philanthropy in aiding the escape of Slaves. 
They haven't enacted a statute making Humanity ]ien^— admit- 
ted humanity. Not humanity by pretence, with other and cul- 
pable motive underlying it. But confessed Humanity. The South 
calls it fanaticism. Well, if it is, they have no law against it. 
They might have one, perhaps— though they could hardly have 
the front to enact one now, in the face of mankind. But they 
haven't had one. The laws they have, were provided for negro 
abstraction such as might take place before the Anti-Slavery 
movement began. For offences against Negro property, such as 
inio-ht be committed from mercenary motives and by men who 
regarded negroes as subjects of ownership. They had no laws 
to^reach the°case of Torrey. They haven't made such motives 
as actuated him, penaJ. They have murdered him in violation 
of their own slave laws even. The only way they could have 
done it in conformity with the slave code, would have been to 
kill him by Lynch Law. That is the only legal process by which 
they could have done it. And Lynch law has been superinduced, 
to meet cases like this, that do not come within the purview and 
rp.ich of their regular Law. 

" They should have Lynched him ! They should have tried him 
before Judge Lynch. To try him before their criramal Judges, 
was to brincr him coram non jiul ice— before an mcompetent tri- 



368 THE DEATH OF TORREY. 

bunal — before a court not having jurisdiction, whose law doesn't 
know of his offence. As they tried Cassias M. Clay. They 
didn't bring Clay before the criminal court that tried Torrey. 
They should have brought Torrey before the court that tried Clay. 
Before his Honor Judge Lynch. If they had done this — if they 
had seized Torrey and murdered him — and had been called to 
account for it in the regular criminal courts — they might have 
pleaded the otlur Law of the country, and the other tribunals to 
which alone they were answerable. They couldn't have con- 
victed Clay in the Court House. Neither could they Torrey, 
legally. They didn't dare bring Clay there. He would have 
been defended and they must have acquitted him or trampled the 
law of Kentucky under foot. As they did the law of Maryland, 
in the conviction and executidn of Torrey. I repeat there is no 
law in Maryland against such negro-taking as Torrey's. Slavery 
never anticipated any such taking — and therefore made no pro- 
vision against it. And had Torrey been a Marylander — instead 
of a Northern fanatic, they never would have dared apply their 
law to his case. They would have had to Lynch him. 

Will New England — will the non-slaveholding North, let the 
murder sleep ? Had Algiers done thus to a Massachusetts citi- 
zen — would not some Decatur of the country be demanding ven- 
geance for it at the mouth of Old Ironsides' guns, before the 
walls of Tripoli? Had Mexico done it, wouldn't it have been 
better cause of war than any they can bring for the war now 
waging against her — good as it may be ? 

A New England citizen has been imprisoned and put to death 
without pretence of criminality — for mistaken philanthropy, at 
worst — -for j)]iilanthropy, U7idcni ably. But what can be done? 
Nothing, because of the spell Slavery has shed over the land. 
Slavery may perpetrate any thing — and New England can't see 
it. It can horse-whip the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts 
and spit in her governmental face, and she will not recognize it 
as an offence. She sent her Hon. Sam. Hoar to Charleston, on a 
state embassy. Slavery cauglit him and sent him most ignomin- 
iousiy home. The solemn great man came back in a hurry. He 
returned on a most undignified trot. He run. He scampered — 



THE DEATH OF TORREY. 3(39 



the stately official. The Old Bay State actually pulled foot — 
cleared — dug — as they say, like any scamp with a hue and cry 
after him. Her grave old Senator, who no more thought of ever 
having to break his stately walk, than he had of being flogcred at 
school for stealing apples, came back from Carolina upon the full 
run — out of breath, as well as out of dignity. Well, what's the 
result? Why, nothing. They no more think of showing any 
resentment about it, than they would if Lightning had struck 
him. He was sent back, actually, " by the visitation of God." 
And if they had lynched him to death and stained the streets of 
Charleston with his blood — a Boston Jury, if they could have held 
inquest over him — would have found that he died by the visita- 
tion of God. And it would have been " Crowner's quest Law." 
Slavery's " Crowner's." 

They have murdered Torrey. But there can be no inquisi- 
tion. They have brought his body home. They " gave it to his 
friends," as they do the body of a man hung on the gallows. 
These have brought it to Boston. And they talk of having a 
public funeral and an oration. They thought of having it in 
Park Street Meeting House. They might as well have expected 
it, for celebrating the obsequies of Tirrell, had he been hanged 
for murder — as the obsequies of the murdered Torrey. " Park 
Street" don't open to such obsequies. And such obsequies ought 
not to go in there if it did open. " Park Street" is at the bottom 
of the murder. Boston is hand in glove with it. The Bay State 
is. The Nation is. It is as insensible as a dead dog to the mur- 
der of Torrey — when it ought to stir the Land like the massacre 
of the 5th of March, 1770 — when they shot down Monk in the 
streets of Boston — and " Maverick and Gray — Caldwell, At- 
tocks and Carr !" In the old days of Hancock and Warren. 

I will make no ado about it. It would be like clamoring to a 
Burying Yard. Torrey, to be sure, is murdered — but what of 
that ? Who cares 1 He has been killed by Slavery. 



370 "PASTORAL CONVENTION.' 

" PASTORAL CONVENTION." 

[From the Herald of Freedom of May 22, 1846.] 

" Pastor," means Shepherd. Shepherds are keepers of sheep — 
overseers of flocks. The clergy call themselves " Pastors." 
Have they Human sJicep in custody ? The name implies it. 
They are Pastors of flocks. Not of quadruped flocks — but two- 
footed. Of human flocks. A pretty daring relation to claim to 
mankind. And it is the one they actually sustain. That of 
sheep-keepers ! The People are sheep — flocks of sheep, the clergy 
are their Shepherds ! It may be all fitting — but let the fact be 
knovi^n and noticed. The clergy regard the people as sheep, and 
themselves as their shepherds. Shepherds lead their sheep, drive 
them — at times dog them — fold them, and shear them ! The 
Shepherd fleeces the sheep ! Is there sMy pastoral illustration in 
sheep-shearing 1 They sometimes make mutton of some one of 
the flock. Of some lamb, that is tender — or some wether, that 
is fat — especially if they are regardless of fences. Does this 
muttoning illustrate "excommunication?" The pastor some- 
times visits excommunication on a hreachy church-member. This 
used to be a truly muttoning process, transforming the living 
sheep, on whom it was visited, into dead mutton. But of late, it 
has become comparatively harmless — and hundreds of sheep — 
from all sorts of pens, rather be thus muttoned, than stay and be 
sheared. The pretence of the pastor is, to keep off" the Wolf, 
(the Devil.) Sometimes he is "Wolf," himself He then puts 
on the " clothing" of these he has in charge, in order to appear 
to be of the flock. For the time he has to content his wolfship 
with the wool — keeping an eye, however, on the mutton. 

The New Hampshire Shepherds are about to hold a conven- 
tion in this place. It is announced by the Reverend Henry 
Wood in his Journal. He is one of the Sheep-guardians, and 
has had goodly experience of both carcass and fleece. He an- 
nounces with great pomp, the doings cut out for the Convention. 
I call the people's attention to them — as indicative of the cha- 
racter of these Shepherds and of their importance and value to 



"PASTORAL CONVENTION." 371 

the people. Will their quadrupedships please venture to attend 
to me a moment. I ask them to suspend their nibbling, and look 
at their Reverend Shepherds in Convention. A " Concio" is first 
to be performed. The Reverend Jonathan Clement is to per- 
form it. It is a Latin thing. What it is, no English yankee 
can tell. Something solemn, no doubt. They used to have 'em 
at the College, at Commencement. " Concio ad Clerums," these 
were. This is simple " Concio," without any " Clerums." Then 
a " Sermo" is to be performed. The Reverend Archibald Bur- 
gess is to perform that. A " Pastor" that looks as if he had seen 
sheep in his day — live ones and dead ones. A natural-born 
Pastor he looks like — one " dyed in the wool." After the Ser- 
mo — a collection for the " Widows' Charitable Fund." Whose 
widows, doesn't appear in the programme. But it is pastors' 
widows. The Brotherhood's widows and nobody's else. Every 
Brotherhood looks out for its own widows. The Masons used 
to for theirs. The sheep have privilege of contributing to this 
widows' fund, I presume. As to the sheep's widows — the sheep 
must look out for them themselves. The Pastors never contri- 
bute to the sheep's widows' fund. Deacons of old used to look 
after all sorts of widows. The modern Priesthood looks only 
after its own. 

There are questions coming before the Pastors for discussion. 
Do they concern the sheep's welfare 1 Hear them and see. First, 
" Is it Congregational, that every Church have final action in 
discipline?" Two old heroes — I will not say Bruisers, are de- 
signated to tug at this thundering Query. Archibald Burgess 
and Abraham Burnham. I guess either of them if he spoke his 
mind, would say the church had no right of action at all, final or 
other, aside from the Pastor. For what have the sheep to do with 
discipline ? It would be amusing to hear these old theological 
Rams, (to borrow a pastoral simile) butt on such a tremendous 
question. " Has every church Jinal action ?" That is, is there any 
appeal from a church to an association ? — Of what consequence 
is it to any mortal creature whether these corporations have any 
action or not ? What is their business but to try folks for stay- 
ing away from meeting or communion ? It is a mere question 



372 "PASTORAL CONVENTION." 

of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, in which individuals have no inte- 
rest whatever. The Pastors treat it as if all creation depended 
upon it — and designate it a year beforehand, and hold holy con- 
vocations about it. In solemn truth, it is all fudge ! 

The second dreadful question, is no less than this — " What is 
intended by the laying on of hands of the Presbytery?" It is 
an aioful question. The welfare of souls depends upon it ! If 
I were to say " what was intended by the laying on of hands of 
the Presbytery," — I should say that the Presbytery "intended" 
to impose on the dupe whose heads they laid hands on, and on 
the abused spectators. That's "what is intended" by the Pres- 
bytery. Another thing " intended" is what is always intended 
by laying hands on any body or any thing, that is, to appropriate 
it. The Presbytery means to make a tool of the one they lay 
hands on. That any thing is intended by it more than by any 
other jugglery of necromancers, is all delusion and imposition. 
A wicked piece of vanity and witchcraft — to make the ignorant 
stare and the superstitious wonder. It is playing the rogue, and 
the shrewd, old ecclesiastical foxes know it — as well as the Romish 
Priests know the trickery of their hocus pocus. It is just as 
efficacious as the old Royal touch, to cure the Scrofula. Those 
old English Kings used to poke swelled necks, with their greasy 
fingers and thumbs, to cure them of Scrofula — which, from the 
circumstance, came to be called " King's Evil." The real 
" King's evil" was the touch, and not the swelled necks. I am 
out of all patience, when I think of the impositions played off 
on wretched mankind. Are they always to be practised upon 
them ! If these Pastors were honest men, I would go into this 
Pastoral Convention, and tell them their delusions. But if they 
were honest, they would not be under them. Another question 
is, " whether Scriptures authorized Lay ordination?" Scriptures 
don't say any thing about " lay," that I remember — any more 
than about set or hatch. This matter of " lay" and clerical, is 
of modern invention, Christ would have told it to " get behind 
him," if they had broached it in his presence and hearing. He 
had none of their distinctions of this sort — about among his folks. 
All were equals with him. He knew no laymen, in degraded 



TILLING THE GROUND. 373 

distinction from any other. It is a distinction cooked up by 
modern Jesuitry. But it is no use to say it. The " Pastors" 
will look glum and solemn, and that is an answer to any thing, 
that can be said. 

But the grand question is concerning the inviolability of the 
Pastors. That is " open for general discussion." I should like 
to witness it. It is whether loi/-eyes may gaze on the infirmities 
of a Pastor. Would the people believe it ? Would they believe 
their own ears, if they heard such a question started by the di- 
vines as this? But read. " Is a minister, while unimpeached'" 
(by the clergy, of course) " unimpeached as a minister — liable 
to discipline by a church, as a private member?" That is to 
say — can the church behold the short comings of a divine, until 
after his peers — his brother divines — have impeached him, and 
thrown him down among them from the top of Olympus ? That 
is the question. Is it not virtually saying, that the conduct of 
the priest, so long as he is in with the Brotherhood — is sacred 
from the scrutiny of the people ? And that they may not see his 
iniquities? And that it is in the option of the Brotherhood, 
whether they will make him ever subject to the people's scrutiny 
or not ? Isn't this it ? Palpably, it is. Though nothing is pal- 
pable, about the Priesthood. They may say what they please — 
and do what they please — and remain invisible to the people. 
The people's eyes are liolchn, that they cannot see them — any 
more than sheep can see what their pastors are about. Well, it 
may be, the common people are sheep — made to be sheared and 
bamboozled. If so, let them be. I feel at times as if it was a 
horrible imposition. But perhaps I am mistaken. 



TILLING THE GROUND. 
[From the Herald of Freedom of July 10, 1846.] 

This is the only thing mankind can do that deserves the name 
of occupation. To till the ground and raise the bread out of it, 
" the staff of life." This is occupation. I don't mean, raise it 
32 



374 TILLING THE GROUND. 

by slave labor, or even by paid labor — or the people's labor in 
any shape, but by your own labor. The sweat of your own, 
identical, ho7ia Jide forehead. Nobody with health enough to 
labor with his hands and with a chance to get at the face of the 
earth to vex it with the plough or the glorious hoe, and wit enough 
to work, should eat any bread, unless he earned it in ground la- 
bor. Every mechanic should also be a worker on the land to the 
extent of raising the amount of his own bread. Health demands 
it. Duty to our mother earth, whose face needs culture and 
dressing, demands it, and duty to the laborers among our fellow- 
men, demands it, who, but for that, will have to sustain us, ever 
and always maintaining themselves and theirs. Human happi- 
ness and advancement demand it at the hands of every body. It 
will take that amount of manual labor on the ground, to make 
any body content with human life. A man can't be happy with- 
out it any more than a bird can without a chance to sing or to 
fly. The human muscles claim that amount of stretch, and if 
every body would afford them that, mankind are all provided for, 
and the dear, old Mother Earth would be all of a blossom, like a 
rejoicing young apple-tree in the Spring. It would be a pretty 
place, this Earth, then to live on. Sightly. Now the mass of it 
is good for nothing but to run away from, or make roads over, 
for folks to abscond on, from other like places. 

And it should be the chief ambition of young men to know 
how to do this labor and to succeed in actually doing the most 
of it, to the best advantage. The genius for it should be regard- 
ed as the first genius — above all your lawyers, doctors, divines, 
traders, politicians, and even your poets. 

The first man on " God's Earth" should be the best farmer on 
it. The man, who has done the most with his otcn hands, to- 
wards making the best farm. The handsomest place to' live and 
the most productive of the beautiful and good things of this life. 
The prettiest place to look at, for folks going by — travellers. Not 
the greatest place, but the smallest that would answer the great 
purpose of family existence and elegant supports. By elegant 
support, I don't mean what most people would think I did. The 
farmer's dress should be the standard of fashionable beauty — the 



BURSTING OF THE PAIXHAN GUN. 375 

homespun frock and trowsers. They may be made becomingly. 
And when their wearers lead the ton oi fashionable life — their 
dress will become the standard. The glorious, coarse blue and 
white, that sturdy labor wears at the plough-tail, it is princely to 
the right eye, beyond any thing that tailors can conjure out of 
broadcloth and satin. Only let it be heroically worn, and it is 
more becoming than the dashiest Uniform, or the latest cut of the 
metropolis. Fashion can make it so, as it has now made it other- 
wise. It is fashion only, that could render present dress — and 
dress generally — tolerable to the eye or endurable to the limbs 
and body. Let fashion and habit be brought to correspond with 
nature and natural taste. It would prevail if the adopters of it 
would take the rank in society that really belongs to the producers 
of the staff of life. 

Toward Labor on the Ground, then, let the young ambition 
of mankind be directed, and let the idle vocations go take their 
places behind it. Then Labor would be sought instead of shun- 
ned, as it now is, as degrading to respectable mankind and fitted 
only for slaves. 



BURSTING OF THE PAIXHAN GUN. 

[From the Herald of Freedom of March 15, 18W.] 

The reader has heard, by this time, of the terrible catas- 
trophe on board the nation's War-Steamer, Princeton — where 
five of our governmental chieftains were stricken down at once 
by the exploded fragments of a great death-engine — intended by 
them for the destruction of others. They were practising with 
it, and amusing themselves with exhibitions of its hideous power. 
Five chieftains, and a slave killed, John Tyler's slave. The 
bursting of the Paixhan gun has emancipated him — and left his 
owner behind. How busy death has been on every side of that 
owner, since he was thrown up into power by the fermentation 
of 1840 ! Above him and below him, in place, " the insatiate 
archer," (as poetry has called a dull genius, that never shot an 
arrow in his life,) has brought down the tall men, and left him 



376 BURSTING OF THE PAIXHAN GUN. 

Standing, like an ungleaned stalk, in a harvested corn-field. He 
seems to have been the subject of a passover. I saw account of 
the burial of those slaughtered politicians. The hearses passed 
along, of Upshur, Gilmer, Kennon, Maxcy, and Gardner, — but 
the dead slave, who fell in company with them — on the deck of 
the Princeton, was not there. He was held their equal by the 
impartial gun-burst, but not allowed by the bereaved nation, a 
share in the funeral. The five chiefs were borne pompously to 
the grave, under palls attended by rival expectants of the places 
they filled before they fell, (not those they now fill) but the poor 
slave was left by the nation to find his way thither as he might, — 
or to tarry above ground. Out upon their funeral — and upon 
the paltry procession that went in its train. Why didn't they 
inquire for the body of the other man who fell on that deck ! 
And why hasn't the nation inquired — and its press ? I saw ac- 
count of the scene, in a barbarian print called the Boston Atlas — 
and it was dumb on the absence of that body — as if no such 
man had fallen. Why, I demand in the name of human nature, 
was that sixth man of the game brought down by that great shot — 
left unburied and above ground ? — for there is no account yet, 
that his body has been allowed the rites of sepulture. What 
m/erf him, that he was not buried ? Wasn't he dead? Wasn't 
he killed as dead as Upshur and Gilmer 1 And didn't the same 
explosion kill him? And won't his corse decay, like theirs? 
Don't it want burying as much? Did they throw it overboard 
from the deck of the steamer, — to feed the fishes ? What have 
they done with it ! Six men were slain by the bursting of that 
gun — and but five were borne along in that funeral train. Where 
have they left the sixth ? Could they remember their miserable 
color-phobia, at an hour like this? Did the corses of those 
mangled and slaughtered secretaries revolt at the companionship 
of their fellow-slain, and demur at being seen going with him to 
the grave? If not, what ailed the black man, I ask again, who 
died on the deck of the steamer with Abel Upshur and Thomas 
Gilmer, that he couldn't be buried ? Are they cannibals, at that 
government seat, and have they otherwise disposed of that corse ? 
For what would not^Af^^doto a lifeless body^who would enslave 



FREE SPEECH. 377 



it, when alive? I will not entertain the hideous conjecture — 
though they did enslave him in his life-time. But they didn't 
bury him, even as a slave. They didn't assign him a jim-crow 
place in that solemn procession, that he might follow, to wait 
upon his enslavers in the land of spirits. They have gone there 
without slaves, or waiters. Possibly John Tyler may have had a 
hole dug somewhere in the ground, to tumble in his emancipated 
slave. Possibly not. Nobody knows, probably — nobody cares. 
They mentioned his death among the statistics of that deck, and 
that is the last we hear of the slave. His tyrants and enslavers 
are borne to their long home, with pomp and circumstance, and 
their mangled clay honored and lamented by a pious people. The 
poor black man — they enslaved and imbruted him all his life-time, 
and now he is dead, they have, for aught appears, left him to 
decay and waste above ground. Let the civilized world take 
note of the circumstance. 



FREE SPEECH. 

[From the Liberty Chimes, September, 1845.] 

How can we ask freedom for the plantation slave, if the abo- 
litionist himself may not be trusted with liberty of speech ! If 
the advocates of humanity are not competent to meet together, 
and talk about freedom, without first being fettered, how can 
wild-passioned men hope to live free amid the stern excitements 
of conflicting life ! 

It seems to me, abolitionists had better first ascertain, whether 
any degree of freedom is possible to themselves. Whether any 
liberty — the liberty of thought — is practicable to any of the race. 
Whether unfortunate humanity be not in fact, here on the earth, 
incapable of self-regulation, and only to be kept in a state of 
endurable servitude, by fear of the aggregated brute force of 
Community. We have gone manacled from our birth, and have 
got to thinking chains are natural to us — and that they were born 
with us. They were born with us — or we with them, — but we 
33* 



378 FREE SPEECH. 



better not have any more born so. We inherited fetters from 
our " fatliers" — but we better not transmit them. 

The right of speech — it is the right of rights — the paramount 
and paragon attribute of our kind. It is glorious among the 
brutes, when it is free. The roar of the lion — it is majestic and 
sublime in his native desert. Not so, when he grunts under the 
.'^tir of the poker, in the menagerie. The scream of the eagle, 
in the sky — or on the crag, where he lives and has his home — 
how unlike his most base croak, when they withhold his allow- 
ance in the cage that you may hear him make a noise. The one 
is free speech, in " free meeting." The other, speech-making, 
under chairs, boards and business committees. How different 
the wild note of the fife-bird, in the top of the high pine, when 
the setting sun awakens her throat after the shower, — how differ- 
ent, from the chitter of the poor caged canary, in the pent-up 
street of the city. But illustration fails. The glory and beauty 
of freedom cannot be illustrated. It must be witnessed — expe- 
rienced, and felt. 

Speech is the only terror of tyrants. It is the thing they can- 
not control or encounter. Brute force has no tendency to match 
it. " Four hostile presses," said Bonaparte — the most formidable 
brute the modern world has seen — " are more to be dreaded, than 
a hundred thousand bayonets." So, he might have said, is ont 
hostile press — if it is free. And if it is free, it will be hostile to 
tyranny. It is as hostile to " Boards," as it is to bayonets, and 
as formidable. It is " the king of terrors" to both. The Board 
has nothing to oppose to it, but the bayonet. The bayonet is the 
Board's argument, — and only argument. A Board without a 
bayonet, is a hornet without a sting — or a toothless hound. But 
it will try to worry and bark down free speech, if it cannot bite. 
And as the bayonet is the Board's only argument, so only Boards 
ever wield that ugly and hateful implement. Individuality never 
can hold or maintain it. The individual can resort only to the 
truth. 

" Stop his mouth !" cries alarmed and exasperated tyranny. 
Stifle his outcry ! Mankind will hear him ! Shut him up, where 
he cannot be heard! Let his dungeon be deep and his walls 



FREE SPEECH. 379 



thick, — not so much to keep him, as to keep him from being 
heard! I must not hear him, myself. " It disturbs my tran- 
quillity." Keep him alone! 

It is the uttered word, that awakens the dead and that moves 
mankind. Words are the storm that " awakens its deep." Words 
revolutionize society and nations, and change human condition. 
They bring those " changes," the " fear" of which "perplexes 
monarchs." Monarchy builds its bastiles to imprison them. It 
erects them amid the silence of the people, and it is only Speech 
that can throw them down. The bastile of France, that fell at 
the outbreak of her dread revolution, — it was not artillery that 
prostrated its walls, but they were shaken down by the thunder 
and earthquake of the voice of the people, and had France 
known the power of that voice, she would have shaken down 
with it every throne in Europe. But she took the bayonet, and 
it failed. It failed even in the hand of Bonaparte, the strongest 
hand that ever grasped it to conquer the world. It failed, and 
France is again in chains. Kings build their bastiles again in 
their borders, for the imprisonment of the people, but they have 
to build them in a different style of architecture than the old 
Gothic, for fear the sight of that would awaken again the people's 
voice. 

And Bonaparte himself, with a wall around him of half a mil- 
lion of bayonets, trembled at the slightest breath of free speech. 
The creature sued men for libel in the English Courts. At a 
time he was at war with her — when the proud island stood dis- 
mayed at his threatened descent upon her, — when he hovered with 
his dreadful Marshals on the edge of the British Channel, the 
English Common Pleas was resounding with the call of the Crier, 
to ''John Smith, to come into Court and answer to the complaint 
of Napoleon Bonaparte, or his default would be recorded." The 
P^mperor had no confidence at all in his terrible Marshals, — or 
the armies of Italy and of Egypt, so long as free speech could 
!!!)el him with impunity in the coffee-houses of London. And 
did it strike any body as ludicrous, that Bonaparte should be 
scared at a libel? Not at all. His folly was, that he sought to 
defeat it by a lawsuit. Had he been a man. he v/ould have sent 



3S0 FREE SPEECH. 



an article against the libeler, to the British press. He did not 
dare to. He ^vas a tyrant — the truth was against him, — free 
speech was uttering it. It scared him, and he stupidly went to 
law. I forget whether he got the case ! 

To come nearer home, and to the fields of moral strife. Cor- 
poration is the same coward and tyrant-foe of free speech, in the 
chair — the board — the business committee, as in the camps and 
courts of kings : and free speech, the bane and terror of corpo- 
ration in all its forms. Its motto and banner-words, — No Com- 
mittees — nor commitment. No Boards, on which to lay humanity 
out, for a living burial. Association — but of associate individ- 
uals — whole individuals — unabated and undiluted. Concert of 
action — but of individual, personal action — where no combina- 
tion can bring upon individual freedom, the wizard spell of the 
majority — where that monstrosity is not known — where unfelt 
and unacknowledged, is the influence of members and the au- 
thority of names — where are no great men — no leaders; that 
sends out its great truths, backed up by no external or extrinsic 
farce, to make their own way to the free and unawed heart of the 
people. This is the " anti-slavery society." The New Hamp- 
shire Anti-Slavery Society is such. The humblest and poorest 
of anti-siavery bodies. Poor in every thing but its principles, its 
love of liberty and its fidelity to the cause of Humanity. In 
these it is rich. It proffers its hard right hand of working fel- 
lowship to the anti-slavery of the land, and especially to the field- 
tried and service-worn handful in little Rhode Island. It is 
" auxiliary" to all anti-slavery society, — subsidiary to none, as 
indeed no real anti-slavery body would claim of it subordination 
or homage. 



4> 



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